Eurobrand: Nestlé and Novartis are the top Swiss brand companies

More than 3,000 brand companies and their individual brands in 24 countries and 16 sectors were analyzed for the Eurobrand 2009 study presented by the European Brand Institute in Vienna. Europe's most valuable brand company is Nokia (35.2 billion euros, -8%), followed by the LVMH Group (32.4 billion euros, -7.3%) and InBev Group (27 billion euros, +56%) in third place. Two Swiss groups are also among the top 50 brand companies: Nestlé in 12th place (17 billion euros, +15%) and Novartis in 23rd place (11 billion euros, -1.3%). Nokia is also in first place on the list of individual brands, with Vodafone in second place (23.8 billion euros, -1.4%) and Mercedes-Benz in third place (19.4 billion euros, -9.2%). The only Swiss brand in the top 25 is Nescafé in 10th place (12.8 billion euros, +10.7 percent).
To the Top 50 Brand Corporations list
To the Top 25 Single Brands list

Financial services and automotive brands lose out - consumer goods brands benefit
As the ranking shows, Europe's financial services and automotive brands have been hit hardest by the crisis. Financial services brands lost an average of 24 percent in brand value, while automotive brands lost 9.6 percent. The British banking group RBS (-40%), the German Allianz Group (-18.5%) and car brands such as the Fiat Group, Mercedes and Porsche have been hit the hardest.
Consumer goods brands are the winners of the crisis and were able to increase their brand value by 5.8%. The outperformer of the year is the Belgian Inbev Group, which was able to increase its brand value by 56% thanks to the successful acquisition of the US brand Budweiser. Mixed groups such as SAB Miller (+24.5%), Carlsberg (+21.5%), Nestlé (+15%) and Heineken (+14.4%) were also able to realize considerable increases in brand value, Gerhard Hrebicek, Director of the European Brand Institute, was quoted as saying in a press release.

Germany remains brand center
Germany remains Europe's leading brand center despite the crisis. In terms of absolute brand values per country, German brand companies lead the European brand landscape. Eight of the sixteen industry leaders, such as Mercedes, SAP, Adidas, Deutsche Bank, Siemens, Deutsche Post, TUI and EON are "made in Germany". Italy's and Norway's brand landscape and in particular the British financial services brands, such as RBS, HSBC and Barclays, are suffering the most from the crisis.
Rising star of the year is the Russian telecommunications brand Beeline Russia's most valuable brand Beeline made it into the top 40 and represents the first CEE brand in Europe's top 50 ranking of the most valuable brand companies in Europe.