The Top Track 100 league table ranks Britain’s biggest private companies by latest sales.

Sales are one of the best indicators of size, even if they do not totally reflect performance. Other leading league tables of the biggest private American and global companies published by Forbes and Fortune are ranked in the same way. However, a limitation of ranking companies by sales is that this method is biased towards “volume” businesses such as wholesalers and retailers.

Criteria: Companies are ranked by unrounded sales, but for clarity rounded figures are shown in the league table. Sales are taken as turnover as reported in a company’s latest accounts, excluding shares from joint ventures and associate companies, and net of Vat. Companies are not required to be in profit, with three out of the 100 reporting losses and two declining to provide group profit figures. Profits are defined as earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda). Exceptionals, joint ventures and impairment of asset were excluded. Exchange rates are as quoted in the accounts or the average interbank exchange rate for the period. Only companies reporting turnover in audited accounts for financial years 2006 or later are included. For financial years with fewer or more than 52 weeks, the figures are annualised on a straight pro-rata basis.

Choice of criteria: Different ways of measuring companies were considered. Private companies cannot be objectively and accurately ranked by value or market capitalisation. Profits, either operating or pretax, were also not considered wholly appropriate for unquoted companies, as these businesses are likely to keep pretax profits to a minimum to reduce tax. Operating profits may also not be reported consistently by all companies, because of different treatment of exceptional items and staggered adoption of new accounting standards. Unquoted companies are often run with different profit objectives from those of their quoted counterparts.

Data collection: Companies were identified by researching accounts filed at Companies House, as well as financial data provided by Fame. However, more than a third (36) of the firms provided Fast Track with accounts that had not yet been filed at Companies House.

Corporate structure: Companies have to be unquoted at the time of publication and registered in the UK. Companies may have their ultimate holding company offshore, as is the case for the Virgin companies, Specsavers and the Vita Group.

Exclusions: Companies that are majority owned by, or equal joint ventures between, quoted companies are excluded, as are companies with the majority of sales generated by their quoted subsidiaries. Companies with fewer than 50 staff are also excluded, as are not-for-profit companies, including cooperative societies, mutual societies such Nationwide building society, provident associations such as Bupa and member-owned buying groups such as Nisa-Today’s. Partnerships, such as lawyers, accountants and management consultancies are also excluded. 20:20 mobile has not been included because it is now headquartered in the Isle of Man and declined to provide financial figures for the company since it was bought out of the Caudwell Group.

Incomplete data: Private company information can be incomplete and, while every effort is made to include all qualifying companies, there may be omissions. Nominations for next year’s table would be welcome. Some exceptions were made to the qualification criteria set out above. The compiler’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

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