Ireland's top 1,000 companies in 2012 -- a work of faction?
The Irish Times this month published a ranking of Ireland's top companies in cooperation with KPMG, a Big 4 accounting firm, and we ask if it's a work of faction (a mix of fact and fiction)? CRH, the multinational buildings material firm, is on top followed by Microsoft, Google, DCC and Dell. Corporate nationality has become less certain in recent times when for example, Accenture, the US management consultancy firm, has its headquarters in Ireland, which doesn't make it an Irish business while CRH, developed beyond its Irish roots with most of its staff of 75,000 now located outside Ireland; its primary stock exchange listing in London and up to 90% of its shares owned overseas. The US firms Microsoft, Google and Dell, get their top rankings not because of the levels of their activity in Ireland but because for tax purposes, end-user sales in countries such as the UK or Germany, are booked in Ireland rather in the actual countries where the transactions took place. Microsoft had a global revenue per employee of $777,140 in fiscal 2011 and $27m in Ireland; Google had a global revenue per employee in 2010 of $1.33m and $8.52m in Ireland.
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