Methodology for Fortune 500 Europe

Companies are ranked by total revenues for their latest available respective fiscal years. All companies on the list must publish financial data and report part or all of their figures to a government agency. Figures are as reported, and comparisons are with the prior year’s figures as originally reported for that year. Fortune does not restate the prior year’s figures for changes in accounting.

Revenues

Revenue figures include consolidated subsidiaries and reported revenues from discontinued operations, but exclude excise taxes. For banks, revenue is the sum of gross interest income and gross noninterest income. For insurance companies, revenue includes premium and annuity income, investment income, realized capital gains or losses, and other income, but excludes deposits.

Profits

Profits are shown after taxes, extraordinary credits or charges, cumulative effects of accounting changes, and noncontrolling (minority) interests, but before preferred dividends. Figures in parentheses indicate a loss. Profit declines of more than 100% reflect swings from 2021 profits to 2022 losses. Profits for partnerships and cooperatives are reported but are not comparable with those of the other companies on the list because they are not taxed on a comparable basis. Profits for mutual insurance companies are based on statutory accounting. Revenue and profit figures for non-U.S. companies have been converted to U.S. dollars at the average exchange rate during each company’s fiscal year (ended Dec. 31, 2022, unless otherwise noted).

Balance Sheet

Assets shown are those at the company’s fiscal year-end. Figures for non-U.S. companies have been converted to U.S. dollars at the exchange rate at each company’s fiscal year-end.

Employees

The figure shown is either a fiscal year-end or yearly average number, as published by the company. Where the breakdown between full- and part-time employees is supplied, a part-time employee is counted as one half of a full-time employee.

Credits

This year’s Fortune 500 Europe was prepared under the direction of list editor Scott DeCarlo. Financial statements and annual reports were reviewed by data researcher Meghan Malas, accounting specialist Rhona Altschuler, and markets editor Kathleen Smyth. The data verification process was aided substantially by S&P Global Market Intelligence and Refinitiv.