Sluggish growth

Although the total turnover of the large companies affected rose by 2.5% to 1,100 billion euros, only half of them were able to increase their turnover, according to the CEE Top 500 analysis published by Coface.

The overall GDP of the Central and Eastern European region grew by just 0.7% year-on-year. The total profits of companies in the region fell by 17.5% to 44.9 billion euros. The number of employees rose by only 1% to 2.4 million.

The Polish oil group PKN Orlen leads the company ranking, with turnover climbing by 34% to 85.9 billion euros last year. Skoda took second place with a 31% jump in turnover to 23.5 billion euros. The third largest company in the region was the Hungarian MOL Group, whose turnover of 23.3 billion euros was around 5% lower than the previous year. MVM was the second Hungarian company in the top ten, taking 6th place with a turnover of EUR 13.3 billion. Audi Hungaria took 11th place with a turnover of EUR 9.1 billion, an increase of 8% on the previous year.