Database of Companies in the UK: Top Industries and Biggest Players

Most companies are corporations

The majority of companies doing business in the United Kingdom have a legal form of corporations (65.1%), followed by companies with an unknown legal form (17.7%) and proprietorships (12.8%).

Within both legal forms, entities operating in Services are the most represented (43.8% for corporations and 42.5% for proprietorships). In the case of corporations, the second most represented industry is Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (17.6%). Retail Trade is third (12.5%). Among proprietorship, Retail Trade is second (23.8%), and Construction is third (11.1%).

When it comes to corporations, the most represented SIC Codes are Business services (398 thousand), Sub-divider/developer (253 thousand) and Management consulting services (204 thousand). In the case of proprietorships, Eating places are first (66,000), followed by Beauty shops (46,000) and General Auto Repair (30,000).

The most significant number of companies in the United Kingdom is in Services (41.3%), Retail Trade (14.2%), Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (12.6%). Most sales are generated by Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (EUR 6.9B / 41.85% of sales generated by all companies) and Services (EUR 3.8B / 23.25% of sales generated by all companies).

Interestingly, of the total sales in Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate, 69.1% (EUR 4.8B) is generated by companies based in London. That confirms the well-known fact about London being one of the global financial capitals. Moreover, in this industry, most of the world's largest companies have their headquarters in London - INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL BANK OF CHINA LIMITED, BANK OF CHINA LIMITED, JPMORGAN CHASE BANK, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION, BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION, HSBC HOLDINGS PLC.

The top 100 companies in this industry account for 51.7% of sales in the entire industry in the UK.

When it comes to the SIC Codes, many companies fall into Non-Classified Establishments (9.25%), a category for entities that have not been included in any other economic activity. This SIC Code is followed by Business Services (5.92%) and Eating Place (4.15%). 38% of all companies operating in the UK do business in the top 10 SIC Codes.

Almost one-sixth of companies are based in London

The highest number of companies is registered in London (16.4%), followed by Manchester (1.7%) and Birmingham (1.6%). Overall, 26.85% of all enterprises operate in the following 10 cities.

The largest company in the United Kingdom is an INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL BANK OF CHINA LIMITED with annual sales of EUR 163B. ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC is second (EUR 161.2B), followed by BP PLC (EUR 161.1B). The top 15 largest companies have total sales of EUR 1.4T, 20.8% of sales generated by all companies in the United Kingdom.

Regarding the number of employees, the largest company is G4S LIMITED, a private security service with 551,748 employees. TESCO PLC is second with more than 367,000 employees, followed by HSBC HOLDINGS PLC with 239,000 employees. The 15 largest companies employ 4.4% of all employees in the United Kingdom.

If you want to do a more detailed analysis of United Kingdom companies or companies from other European countries, you can use HitHorizons Screener. HitHorizons Screener allows users to pick from various filtering and sorting options and find relevant entities within the HitHorizons database. The resulting datasets can be exported in CSV for further processing in any software.

HitHorizons API enriches any analytical tools, CRMs, ERPs, or other software with data available in the HitHorizons database. HitHorizons aggregates data on 80M+ businesses from 60 countries, including the whole of Europe. Data contains basic information about individual companies such as name, registered address, identification number, contact information, industry, SIC Code, sales performance, and the number of employees.