One of the world’s leading branding companies, Brand Finance, has placed Maersk, Arla and Danske Bank among the top 500 brands in the world.

Maersk and Danske Bank were hitherto the only Danish brands on the list, but now they have been joined by the dairy giant Arla, which has been ranked number 444.

“Even though we just made it onto the list, the ranking confirm our efforts to create a solid brand in the global market,” Hanne Søndergaard, who is responsible for Arla’s global marketing, told newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

Big drop for Danske Bank
Maersk is also experiencing increasing global success and has moved up from number 405 last year to 372 in 2014. Things look somewhat different for Danske Bank, however, which has dropped more than 200 spots from 297 to 498. Danske Bank has recently had a serious image crisis, and it had no wish to comment on the ranking according to Jyllands-Posten.

While there are many different ways to measure a company’s brand value, Brand Finance tends to focus on people’s emotional reaction to the logo, the company´s financial results over a number of years and the opinions of investors.

It may not come as a surprise that the top four on the list are all IT companies, comprising Apple, Samsung, Google and Microsoft.