Europe still on the sidelines of value creation. - The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study on the companies most successful in creating value was published on 17 September and demonstrates that five years after the crisis, Europe is still on the sidelines of creating value at world level, even though the situation has slowly been changing over a number of months now. At the top of the ratings of the ten companies that have created most value for their shareholders between 2008 and 2012 are companies based in the United States and in emerging economies. The fifteenth annual BCG “Value Creators” report, “Unlocking New Sources of Value Creation” demonstrates the dominance of the US and emerging economies in the ratings of the most successful value creating companies compared to the declining ability of European companies in this area. It also illustrates that value creation is still sharply affected by the economic crisis. The average Total Shareholder Return (TSR) among the 1616 companies examined by BCG reached a level of around 4% over the 2008-2012 period, much lower than the pre-crisis value creation level (17.1% over the 2003-2007 period). In the Top10 value creating companies between 2008 and 2012, which includes companies of all different sizes, eight come from emerging markets such as Brazil, the Philippines and Thailand and therefore are not limited to the restricted circle of BRIC countries. Jérôme Hervé, a senior associate director at BCG Paris said that, “these new actors from emerging countries have benefited from the 2008-2012 economic environment to put themselves at the top of the league table but they will be under pressure to keep their place there over the next few years” (our translation). He also explained that over the past few months, there has been a trend among investors to abandon emerging economies and that next year's front-runner could be very different. Although the euro zone's macro-economic environment has displayed recent signs of stabilisation, the companies themselves are still struggling under the burden imposed on them by the crisis. If we look at the ten top companies (of all different sizes), none of them are from Europe. The last one quit in 2009 and in 2013 Europe's top placed company is only in 15th place, ARM (technology) from United Kingdom. According to BCG, sluggish growth on the European markets is to blame, as well as the fact that international investors fled after the sovereign debt crises and there is a lack of capital for developing innovation in Europe, unlike in the US. This trend appears to be changing slowly and European companies have very recently been climbing up this league table, as demonstrated by the rating for the 10 top companies whose capitalisation is above $50 billion. For the first time since 2007, a company from southern Europe is included in this rating (Inditex from Spain which owns the Zara brand). The Top 10 highest performing companies between 2008 and 2012 (with capitalisation above $50 billion) is as follows: 1) Tencent (Hong Kong); annual average yield (AAY) of 33.8%, capitalisation of $59.9 billion at the end of 2012; 2) AmBev (Brazil); AAY of 32.5%, capitalisation $131.1 billion at the end of 2012; 3) Novo Nordisk (Denmark); AAY of 24.4%, capitalisation of $88.6 billion at the end of 2012; 4) Samsung Electronics (South Korea); AAY of 23,4%, capitalisation of $188.1 billion at the end of 2012; 5) Inditex (Spain); AAY of 22.9%, capitalisation of $87.4 billion at the end of 2012; 6) Apple (US); AAY of 22.1%, capitalisation of $499.8 billion at the end of 2012; 7) Amazon.com (US); AAY of 22%, capitalisation of $113.9 billion at the end of 2012; 8) Home Depot (US); AAY of 21.8%, capitalisation of $91.8 billion at the end of 2012; 9) Walmart de Mexico (Mexico); AAY of 19.2%, capitalisation of $59.4 billion at the end of 2012; 10) SABMiller (United Kingdom); AAY of 17.6%, capitalisation of $75.5 billion at the end of 2012. (IL/trans.fl)