Bet…Fred on £8bn sales
We are pleased to announce our latest information initiative – the Prolific North Top 100 Brands.
Which are the North’s leading brands and who owns them, where are they based and how do they spend their marketing budgets?
The publication of the Top 100 Brands in February will address these and other issues as this début compilation sheds new light on the North’s leading brands and the reach and scale of their activities in the North and beyond.
The Prolific North Top 100 Brands is sponsored by Tangerine PR and The Juice Academy and we are also working with MediaCom North, which is helping us with aspects of the information.
This new initiative will complement our growing range of annual information features including our Top 50 PR Agencies, Top 50 Integrated Agencies and our forthcoming Top 50 Digital Agencies initiatives.
The range, variety and ownership of brands based in the North will surprise many.
From multinationals such as Kellogg’s, whose UK operations are based in Manchester, to Princes Foods in Liverpool, which generates sales of circa £1.7bn for its parent company Mitsubishi Corporation of Japan.
Walmart, the world’s largest retailer and the biggest global private employer with over two million employees, owns Asda in Leeds, and also in Leeds is Arla Foods, owned by a Swedish-Danish co-operative and best known here in the UK for its Lurpak brand.
Major listed brands in the North include Moneysupermarket, Morrisons, Greggs and Barratt Developments while a number of other companies remain staunchly in private hands such as Betfred (reporting turnover up to £8bn today) and Warburtons.
Reflecting current trends, several other well-known brands have now passed into private equity hands, such as DFS, which was sold to Advent International in 2010 for £500m while LateRooms, twice-owned by private equity houses, now sits within the the TUI Travel group.
Major financial and retailing brands based in the North include the various Co-operative brands, the Halifax Building Society, now owned by Lloyds but still the UK’s largest provider of residential mortgages and savings accounts, Marks & Spencer Money Plc and MBNA, the latter two both based in Chester.
Alongside these household names, there are dozens of other independently-owned brands, from furnishings company Plumbs, to retailers Cotton Traders, Taylors of Harrogate and Lakeland to brands spanning a variety of sectors, from airline Jet2.com, internet gamer bet365 and Injury Lawyers 4u.
The publication of the Prolific North Top 100 Brands in February will build upon our growing reputation as the leading provider of definitive information on the North’s marketing, creative and media industries – and in the process will inform and entertain our readership and beyond.
