(News Bulletin 247) – The ranking of the largest German stock market capitalizations unsurprisingly gives pride of place to industry. Even if the first group remains a technological stock.

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 by country based on data from companiesmarket.com.

Although Germany remains the leading economic power in Europe, its stock market is lagging behind the French and British. With 2.300 billion dollars, it is even closely followed by Switzerland (2.231 billion dollars according to companiesmarketcap.com). At the beginning of last year, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange suffered a stinging setback. The industrial gas specialist Linde, the largest market capitalization on the DAX 40 at the time, had chosen to abandon its listing on the German market to favor that in New York. And a few months later, the specialist in high-end sandals Birkenstock chose Wall Street to list on the stock market rather than its country of origin.

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Four automakers in the top 10

However, there are still some great names left in Frankfurt. In particular the largest company currently on the stock market, the professional software publisher SAP, whose solutions are deployed in many companies. The group recently unveiled a vast restructuring to accelerate in artificial intelligence. Its stock has gained more than 29% since the start of the year.

In second place is Siemens, a conglomerate which employs more than 320,000 people and is present in transport (via Siemens Mobility), energy, building infrastructure, industry and automation systems for the digital factory, financial services or even health. Its 75%-owned subsidiary, Siemens Healthineers, specializing in imaging and medical devices, also occupies tenth place.

The country’s large telecoms operator Deutsche Telekom (which however only generates 34% of its revenues in Germany compared to 29% in the United States/Canada) occupies third place, ahead of Europe’s largest insurer, Allianz.

Germany would not be Germany without its major automobile manufacturers. Introduced on the stock market at the end of 2022 with great enthusiasm (since falling well), Porsche is fifth, ahead of two other premium groups, Mercedes-Benz, sixth, and BMW, eighth, while the Volkswagen group and its eight brands (including Porsche of which it still holds 75%) lands in ninth place.

In the middle of all these automobile groups slips into seventh place the pharmaceutical and chemical group Merck KGaA. Present on the DAX since 2007, this company should not be confused with the American Merck & Co, which was originally a branch of the German group. But in 1917, following the entry of the United States into the First World War, Merck lost control of its foreign subsidiaries including Merck & Co, founded in 1890, which became an independent company.

The largest capitalizations in the world:

  • The largest groups on the stock market in France
  • The largest groups on the stock market in the United States