The business magazine Trends has published a guide to the Top 30,000 businesses in Belgium which notes that industrial and trading companies' turnover rose 14% on 1999 to EUR 456 billion. Net profits also rose by 4.6% on last year to EUR 40.8 bn. The first part of the guide gives a consolidated hierarchy of the top 500 companies, headed by TRACTEBEL, Belgium's biggest company, followed by DELHAIZE, SOLVAY and INTERBREW. The most profitable company was ATOFINA (EUR 1.85 billion), followed by ELECTRABEL (EUR 0.91 bn), TRACTEBEL (EUR 0.81 bn) and CBR (EUR 0.70 bn). PROXIMUS and BELGACOM are seventh and ninth in the list.