Insider Monkey

25 Biggest Companies in Europe by Employees

Ramish Cheema
10 min read

In This Article:

In this piece, we will take a look at the 25 biggest companies in Europe by employees. For more companies, head on over to 5 Biggest Companies in Europe by Employees.

The European economy has not been doing well lately. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine shocked the global energy market and hit the continent pretty hard due to its reliance on cheap Russian fuels. Then, the U.S. Federal Reserve started raising interest rates at an unprecedented pace. This ended up sapping market confidence in major currencies such as the Euro and the Pound, sending the major European currencies to new lows.

In fact, the true dependence that Europe had on Russia for its energy imports — and the extent to which Russia had relied on European revenues for its energy sector — remains unclear until we look at some cold, hard numbers. According to an estimate from the European Commission, at the time of the war, Russia had accounted for 45% of the European Union's natural gas imports - making it the single largest supplier. This trend was also present in the EU's crude oil imports, as Russia supplied 27% of the bloc's oil. This heavy reliance also ended up filling Russia's coffers to fund its Ukraine invasion, as a report from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) showed that by the end of April 2022 - two months after the war started - the EU imported 71% of Russia's €63 billion of fuel exports, amounting to €44 billion.

Within the bloc, Germany was the largest importer, accounting for €9.1 billion of the import bill, with Italy and the Netherlands also contributing significantly in the form of €6.9 billion and €5.6 billion of fuel imports, respectively. Russian oil and gas giants such as Public Joint Stock Company Gazprom (MCX:GAZP.ME), Public Joint Stock Company Rosneft Oil Company (MCX:ROSN.ME), and PJSC LUKOIL (OTCMKTS:LUKOY) played a crucial role during this time period. These firms are also some of the biggest European companies in terms of employees.

However, the era of high reliance on Russian gas for the EU seems to be over. According to the European Commission's latest data, while 37.1% of the bloc's gas imports were from Russia in March 2022, they have now dropped to 12.9% in November 2022. At the same time, the share of supplies from non-Russian sources is at an all time high, as it stood at a whopping 87.1% by the end of the same month. The U.S. has been crucial in picking up this shortfall, with giants such as Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM) supplying large quantities of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe. To gauge the growth in US LNG exports to Europe in numbers, consider the fact that while total exports had stood at 650 million cubic meters in January 2021, they peaked at 5.78 billion in March and April 2022, and sat at 4.09 billion as of November 2022. While you might be wondering at the drop between April and November, this period saw countries such as Germany stockpile the LNG to build their reserves to avoid future energy shocks.

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