PROFESSOR DYLAN JONES-EVANS

Since 2017, the South Wales Business School has been proud to support the compilation of the Wales Top 300 in partnership with Wales Online. Utilising the latest data from Companies House, we have compiled a list of the largest Welsh businesses and examined their impact on the Welsh economy in terms of employment and sales.  Unfortunately, we have again been unable, due to corporate structures, to determine the contribution of companies such as Tata Steel, Ford, BT and Airbus, as well as major retailers such as Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s which are headquartered elsewhere but have a significant presence in Wales.  In addition, there is a lag in the data collected due to accountancy norms and this list certainly does not take into account the effect of Covid-19 on the Welsh economy over the last nine months.  That will be seen next year when businesses submit their accounts for 2020 and we will get a fuller picture of how the pandemic has affected turnover and jobs within ...

Last month, the South Wales Business School, in partnership with Wales Online, compiled a list of the largest Welsh businesses and examined their effect in terms of employment and sales.  As a result, the Wales Top 300 demonstrates the significant contribution of some of the largest businesses in Wales at a time when there are major economic challenges for all firms as we prepare to leave the European Union in 2020. Of course, new entrepreneurial ventures are important to the dynamism and vitality of any economy but large firms continue to make a disproportionate impact on the Welsh economy. For example, the latest data on business demography shows that whilst the total turnover for all Welsh businesses is £122 billion, the total turnover of the Top 300 businesses is £38.4 billion with three firms - Admiral, Iceland and GE Aircraft Engines - accounting for 22 per cent of total turnover of the 300 firms.   This means that the Top 300 firms are responsible for 32 per cent o...

Last year, I compiled a list of the top 300 firms in Wales i.e. those businesses with the highest annual turnover and the data gathered showed some interesting facts about the impact of big businesses on the Welsh economy. Whilst the latest data on business demography shows that whilst the total turnover for all Welsh businesses is £118 billion, the total turnover of the Top 300 businesses is £35 billion. This means that the Top 300 firms in Wales are responsible for around 29 per cent of the turnover of the entire Welsh business community (which is currently around 250,000 firms) Similarly, the number of people employed by Welsh businesses currently stands at 1.1 million, with 151,000 based within the Top 300 firms (or equivalent to 15 per cent of the Welsh business workforce). Over their last 12 months of trading, the overall turnover of the top 300 businesses has increased by 12 per cent whereas employment has only grown by 5 per cent, suggesting that these firms have beco...