Brand values rise as Vodafone tops UK poll

Mobile phone giant Vodafone has unseated HSBC to become the UK’s most valuable brand and the world’s seventh strongest one.

The telco leapfrogged the bank, which slipped back one place to eighth in an annual survey of the top global 500 companies based on brand value, undertaken by consultancy BrandFinance.

The companies were two of only four UK ones found in the top 50, with supermarket chain Tesco moving to 16th from 20th place last year and Barclays bank shifting to number 44 spot from number 77. BP, meanwhile, crashed from its former 38th slot down to 52nd.

Overall, however, BrandFinance indicated that the brand values of the firms listed had risen by 26% over the last year, making them worth an aggregate of $2,873 billion. The banking sector received the largest single boost, growing in monetary terms by $127 billion – a move that indicated a "faster-than-expected resurgence following a near systemic failure" the study said.

While the telco market also experienced high growth rates, increasing in brand value by $97 billion, retail was hammered. It lost $42 billion in monetary terms due to the "widespread consumer predilection of reducing expenditure on non-essential purchases during times of economic uncertainty" the report said.

Unsurprisingly, however, the top six were all US companies headed by retailer, Walmart, Google, Coca-Cola, IBM, Microsoft and GE all followed on in that order. But the survey would appear to have been undertaken before the Japanese car-maker Toyota’s woes came to light as it remained in the number 10 slot.