(News Bulletin 247) – Without too much surprise, luxury dominates the ranking of the largest market capitalizations in France. Even if the industry is far from absent.

What are the largest groups on the stock market by country? To find out, the News Bulletin 247 editorial team decided to devote an article to each major market, retaining the ten largest market capitalizations for each country, based on data from companiesmarket.com.

It’s difficult to miss France, which is far from being a dwarf on the stock market. According to an infographic produced by Deutsche Bank based on Bloomberg data from February, France represents the fifth largest stock market in the world, with a total market capitalization of $3.2 trillion. Which places France between India (4,600 billion dollars) and the United Kingdom (2,900 billion dollars).

This is because France has an impressive number of stock market champions. As shown in the infographic below, nine groups in the Top 10 have a market capitalization of more than 100 billion euros. We could even add EssilorLuxottica, tenth with a capitalization of 95 billion euros, or significantly more than 100 billion dollars.

Unsurprisingly, the top 10 is dominated by luxury, with KOHL (Kering, L’Oréal, Hermès, LVMH) representing between them around a third of the total capitalization of the Parisian market.

>> Access our exclusive graphic analyses, and gain insight into the Trading Portfolio

Luxury but also industry

Second European market capitalization behind the Danish Novo Nordisk, LVMH is firmly established as the largest French company on the stock market, a title that the group took from Totalenergies (at the time Total) in 2017.

For second and third place, it’s tighter. The saddler Hermès, which is probably the best valued CAC 40 group in terms of stock market multiples, took second place from the cosmetics group L’Oréal in February, the annual results of the first being much better received on the stock market than those of the second. But the two companies remain very close.

Totalenergies, the biggest provider of profits on the Paris coast, comes in fourth place. In fifth place we find Christian Dior, which owns 41.42% of the capital of LVMH and 56.86% of the voting rights, hence its market capitalization which only reflects this participation. This company (Christian Dior) does not appear in the major French indices such as the CAC 40 or the SBF 120, certainly due to its very low free float since 97.5% of its capital belongs to the holding companies of the Arnault family (at the end December 2022).

Airbus fails to reach the top five. The aeronautical group is also present on the Frankfurt Dax 40 but we have chosen to retain its French location. Seventh and ninth, Schneider Electric and Air Liquide are both experiencing a superb rally (+47% over one year for the electrical equipment group and +32% for the gas specialist) which allowed them to recently exceed 100 billion euros of market capitalization.

Eighth, the pharmaceutical group Sanofi remains a long way from the time when it occupied first place (between 2012 and 2013). The fault in particular is a strategic reorientation towards the intensification of R&D which was heavily sanctioned by the market in the fall.