Global 100 companies trail European counterparts, but keep jobseekers happy
By Chris Henson & Timmy Fredriksson
The corporate websites of the 100 largest companies globally have now been scored in Webranking by Comprend 2019-2020. The results show that - as was also the case when comparing the content most important to capital market stakeholders last year - the largest 100 global companies clearly trail their 500 largest European counterparts. By contrast, the Global 100 offer a greater supply of career content for jobseekers, and this is their most notable strength in the latest ranking.
Among the Global 100 ranked companies: 21 are European, 71 from North America (69 US), 7 from Asia and 1 is from South Africa. All the companies have been ranked using the same criteria.
We will explore the areas where the differences between these companies' websites and stakeholder demands were the most prominent.
Ownership of companies is unclear
Shareholder information is in fairly minimal supply across the 100 largest global companies - with the average company providing less than half of the key content available on the website of a Europe 500 company. Firstly a timeline of how the share capital has developed is a feature notably missing for nearly 90% of Global 100 companies; this is useful for capital market professionals when looking into a company's financial background.
There is also very limited information on the shareholder structure including major shareholders - far less than Europe 500 companies - with investors therefore having to struggle to piece together the ownership of the world's largest companies. This absence of information on shareholders also extends to senior company insiders, about whom there is an average of just 16% of the key data provided across Global 100 companies. This lack of transparency is a common trait of the governance of the largest 100 global companies, which is another area in which there are significant deficiencies.