Mercadona in world's top 50 largest family firms, ahead of Inditex and El Corte Inglés

SUPERMARKET chain Mercadona has made it into the top 50 biggest family-run businesses in the world, beating Spanish clothing empire Inditex by seven places.

A list of the 500 largest on the planet put together by the Centre for Excellence at Ernst&Young accountants, together with the Family-Run Business Centre at Switzerland's Saint Gallen University, features the Valencia-based company at number 48.

This means the supermarket network, which now has branches all over the country and was founded by Juan Roig and family, has beaten the firm behind the Zara chain in terms of size.

As was to be expected, the largest family-run company on Earth is Wal-Mart, in the USA, which has an annual turnover of €437 billion (US$476.3bn) – and, in fact, the United States accounts for 20% of the total, or 101 out of the 500.

But considering the size of Spain in comparison to that of the USA, the fact that the latter only has 10 times as many firms in the top 500 as the former is a massive achievement for the Mediterranean company.

Spain's 10 largest family firms include global department store El Corte Inglés, transport and infrastructure corporation Ferrovial, service and maintenance giant FCC, plus Acciona, Corporación Gestamp, OHL, Prisa, and Grupo Antolín.

This means Mercadona is bigger and more profitable than El Corte Inglés and the firm behind Spain's railways, with its turnover of €22.3bn (US$24.3bn).

For Europe, Germany has the highest number of family firms in the list – 95, or 19%, of which three are in the top 10 – motor manufacturers Volkswagen and BMW are among just eight family-run businesses in the world with a turnover of more than US$100bn, or €91.7bn.

Italy is third in Europe with 31 companies, including Exor – run by the Agnelli family – which is fourth out of the 500, and is followed by France with 28 firms, India (25), Canada (19), Switzerland (17), and The Netherlands and the UK with 16 each.

The USA tops the list with Wal-Mart as number one and Berkshire Hathaway, owned by tycoon Warren Buffet at number three with a €167.1bn turnover, and the multinational motor manufacturer Ford in fifth place with a turnover of €135bn.