Fourteen Serbian companies entered the third annual edition of SEE TOP 100 ranking in terms of total revenue in 2009 prepared by SeeNews in strategic partnership with global management consultancy A.T. Kearney and in exclusive content partnership with Euromonitor International.

SEE TOP 100 Companies

Oil company Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS), majority owned by Russia’s Gazprom, led the 14 companies with a total revenue of 1.4 billion euro in 2009. NIS occupied the fourth place in the SEE TOP 100 ranking for 2008 with total revenue of 2.096 billion euro. The company’s net loss widened to 393.9 million euro in 2009 from 92.2 million euro in 2008.

Together, the Serbian companies in SEE TOP 100 generated 8.8 billion euro of the 78 billion euro in combined total revenue of the 100 best performing firms in Southeast Europe in 2009.

The SEE TOP 100 ranking comprises the biggest nonfinancial companies in the region with entrants from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, FYRMacedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia.The third annual edition of SEE TOP 100 is based on a pool of more than 1,200 companies from Southeast Europe.

Romania’s largest oil & gas group OMV Petrom leads the ranking for a second year running with a total revenue of 3.388 billion euro in 2009, followed by Croatian oil and gas company INA-Industrija Nafte with a total revenue of 2.7 billion euro. Traditionally, companies from the oil and gas sector performed best in the region last year.

The 24 firms from this industry that enter the ranking, however, have a significantly lower combined total revenue of 25.6 billion euro in 2009, 28% down year-on-year. Unchanged from 2008, electricity companies display the second highest combined total revenue in 2009 – 13.5 billion euro generated by 22 companies that entered the ranking.

The result is less than one percent higher year-on-year. Companies dealing in wholesale and retail trade show a modest, yet the sharpest rise in combined total revenue among the top five industries in 2009, 1.4% up to 12.9 billion euro.

Companies from this sector also have the second highest combined net profit of 222.3 million euro in 2009 versus 250.5 million euro in 2008. The most profitable sector out of the 13 industries included in the 2009 ranking is telecommunications. The 15 companies from this sector that entered the 2009 ranking had a
combined net profit of 1.54 billion euro, slightly lower than 1.62 billion euro in 2008.

SEE TOP 100 Banks

The third edition of SEE TOP 100 also ranks the 100 largest banks in the region in terms of total assets in 2009. In the previous edition SeeNews ranked 50 banks. The ranking shows that despite the financial crisis, most of the 100 largest banks in the SEE region increased their assets last year with growth rates of 0.5% to 110%.

Most banks in the region, however, either halved their net profit or turned to loss in 2009 as the financial crisis and the economic downturn took their toll. One of the main reasons for the drop in profit was the rise in provisions that banks set aside to compensate for the increasing number of non-performing loans in their portfolios.

Slovenia’s largest bank, Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB), leads the SEE TOP 100 Banks ranking for a second year running, ending 2009 with 15.5 billion euro in total assets. However, the bank reported an unconsolidated net loss of 23.6 million euro in 2009 due to rise in provisions. In 2008, NLB had a net profit of 49.2 million euro.

Romania’s largest bank, Banca Comerciala Romana (BCR), occupied the second place in the 2009 ranking of SEE banks, unchanged from 2008. It had total assets of 15.3 billion euro at the end of 2009. BCR ended last year with the highest net profit among the SEE TOP 100 banks, 204.8 million euro, or less than half of its 2008 net profit of 489.7 million euro.

Croatia’s Zagrebacka Banka (ZABA) ranked third with 12.7 billion euro in total assets at the end of 2009, advancing one position from 2008. ZABA also showed the third highest profit among the top 100 banks in Southeast Europe – 166.4 million euro, down from 190.4 million euro in 2008.

To give a more detailed picture of the businesses in the region, SeeNews has compiled a separate ranking of the 100 largest insurance companies in terms of gross written premium in Southeast Europe in 2009.

SEE TOP 100 Insurers

The leader in the SEE Top 100 Insurers ranking, Slovenia’s Zavarovalnica Triglav, also leads its domestic market in terms of gross premium income. The Slovenian insurer ended 2009 with a gross written premium of some 744.5 million euro, slightly down from the previous year’s 754 million euro, but almost double the premium income of second-ranked Croatia Osiguranje. Zavarovalnica Triglav turned to a net loss of 1.8 million euro in 2009 from a net profit of 14.9 million euro a year earlier.

Croatia Osiguranje has a gross written premium income of some 415 million euro, down from 443 million euro in 2008. Despite the fall the company shows a higher net profit of 9.5 million euro in 2009, compared to 8.9 million euro in 2008.

Romanian insurer Allianz-Tiriac Asigurari ranks third with a gross written premium of 304 million euro in 2009, down from 347 million euro in the previous year. The company had a net profit of 7.0 million euro last year.
SeeNews has also expanded the ranking of the leading companies in terms of total revenue per capita to 100 from 50 in last year’s edition.

Traditionally, this ranking is dominated by companies from Slovenia, a country with a population of just over two million. The leading two companies in the 2009 ranking remain unchanged from the previous year. The leader in the SEE TOP 100 Per Capita in 2009 again is Slovenian blue-chip fuel retailer Petrol, followed by the country’s largest food retailer Mercator. Slovenian automobile manufacturer Revoz, a unit of Renault, advanced one position to the third place in the 2009 ranking.

Besides ranking the top 100 companies in Southeast Europe, SeeNews has ranked for a third year running the leading industries in the region. SEE Industrial pools together the revenue generated in 2009 by all companies within a certain sector of SEE TOP 100, and ranks the industries in terms of this aggregate revenue.

Traditionally, oil & gas, electricity, wholesale & retail and telecommunications were the four best performing industries in the region in 2009. SEE TOP 100 also features a SEE Country Top 10 ranking of the biggest companies in each of the countries surveyed based on their total revenue in 2009. For the first time Albania is present in the survey with a ranking of its ten biggest companies.

In addition to the different rankings, in SEE TOP 100 (Edition 2010) you will find analyses of corporate management practices and the main challenges that managers faced in SEE in 2009 prepared by our strategic partner A. T. Kearney.

You will also find profiles of the countries in the region compiled by our exclusive content partner Euromonitor International, a Best Employer survey by Hewitt, industry analyses, forecasts, expert opinions, numerous interviews with leading business people and features about successful companies in SEE.