Apart from a few changes in company rankings, the group of top 10 is interesting for the trends underlying the entire 500 greatest. The first is domination of Polish companies among the ranking greatest. Out of 10 companies with highest last year revenues, four come from Poland, including PKN Orlen, the largest Central European company.
Among all 500 companies, 176 are Polish followed by Ukrainian with 74 representatives, the Czech Republic (70), Hungary (60) and Romania (30). Poland, with its population of 38 million is the most populated Central European market, (higher regional population is in Ukraine) achieved record-setting GDP growth rates last year. Economic growth last year reached 6.6% per year, in some quarters exceeding 7%. In the early 2000 Polish economy experienced a stall and was marked by a large 20% unemployment rate. Economic boom came after the political one, i.e. Polish accession to the EU in 2004. Polish exporters used the opening of the European market. Export growth was followed by a wave of still lasting investments. Poland has already received a significant injection from the European funds with a planned projection of €60 billion until 2013. Accelerated privatisation process (two thirds of privatised economy) also contributed to a lively economic activity. Economic success has stimulated Polish standard of living making domestic consumption one of key generators of the current growth, which will, Government expects, despite a European market slowdown reach about 5.5%. Due to positive economic projection of the national economy, Polish companies will probably dominate over regional businesses for some time to come as well as the 500 Central European greatest companies.
Apart from Polish companies, rankings are dominated this year by the oil and energy group. Among 500 Central European greatest companies, 68 come from the energy sector and 65 from the oil and gas industry, most of them ranked high. High price of crude oil on the world market exceeded the 100$ per barrel barrier last year, inflated oil companies’ revenues thus enabling even small national oil companies such as Macedonian Okta or Slovenian OMV ranks among 500 greatest. Rising prices of the main world energy source has caused a soar of consumption prices making inflation one of the biggest macroeconomic issues. The blow of oil prices on European consumers was softened by a continual drop in the US$ value in comparison with euro considering that a big part of the world oil trade is carried out in US$. The second source of strength shown by oil and energy companies is concentration, which continued last year. Higher revenues enabled numerous acquisitions within the consolidation trend underlying this sector for a number of years. However, there are no more large acquisitions. These are mostly mid-sized company takeovers (according to sector criteria, of course). Last year ČEZ, the Czech’s Republic state utility completed the €1,7 billion joint venture with MOL and merged with Sakary, the Turkish electricity distribution operator worth €600 million. Acquisition activities provide explanation for ČEZ recording a 19% revenue growth and a 51% higher profit last year. Despite the acquisition hunt, Central European energy sector consolidation is still limited by the state ownership of mostly leading companies. This prevents any current alliance between large regional players which declare them-
