Tuesday, October 18
EU companies lag behind in R&D investments compared to global competitors
According to the R&D Scoreboard published by the Commission, although the top EU companies recovered strongly in 2010, data for the world's top 1400 companies shows that EU companies as a whole lagging behind major competitors from the US and some Asian economies on R&D growth.
The European Commission's 2011 "EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard" shows that R&D investment by top EU companies recovered strongly in 2010, with a 6.1% rise following a 2.6% decrease in 2009. Nevertheless, the scoreboard also shows that R&D investment from EU companies as a whole lagging behind major competitors from the US and some Asian economies on R&D growth.
The global top 50 in terms of total R&D investment includes 15 EU companies, 18 US firms and 13 from Japan. Two pharmaceutical companies occupied the top spots: Roche from Switzerland (€7.2 billions) followed by Pfizer from the US (€7 billions). Volkswagen (€6.3 billions), in sixth place, is the biggest EU investor in R&D, followed by Nokia (11th with €4.9 billions), Daimler (13th with €4.8 billions) and Sanofi-Aventis (14th with €4.4 billions).
More than two thirds of R&D investment of EU Scoreboard companies is from those located in the three biggest Member States, Germany, UK and France. Regarding German companies , they shows the highest one-year growth (8.1%). This is mostly due to a few automotive companies (Daimler, Volkswagen and BMW). UK companies' R&D investment growth was 5.8%, close to the EU average, compared to 3.8% for French companies.
With regard to other Member States, a few large players account for high shares of R&D investment growth. These include Novo Nordisk (27.3%) and Vestas (49.8%) in Denmark and Banco Santander (56.3%), Telefonica (16%) and Amadeus (33.2%) in Spain. Fast growing companies such as TomTom (Netherlands) in the electronic equipment sector, Autonomy (UK) and Gameloft (France) in software and Morphosys (Germany) in biotech, are highlighted as success stories showing very good performance in 2010.