The Financial Times Top 500 UK companies contained five print and paper firms among its ranks.


The highest, Bunzl, was ranked 122, up from 149 last year, followed by Rexam, De La Rue, St Ives, Domino Printing Sciences and Communisis.


Arjo Wiggins Appleton, Danka Business Systems and Boxmore International (now owned by Chesapeake) dropped from the list, which ranked firms by market capitalisation.


In the global ratings General Electric, Cisco Systems, Exxon Mobil and Pfizer all overtook 2000s world leader, Microsoft. Electronics and communications companies accounted for five of the top 10 places.


Prints largest global companies slipped slightly in the rankings. The highest, IBM, dropped five places to 18, Hewlett-Packard slipped to 68 from 45 and DuPont was ranked at 98 compared with number 73 in 2000.


Other print-related companies in the Top 500 global companies were BASF, Canon, RWE (the firm that has the majority shareholding in Heidelberg), Fuji Photo Film, International Paper, Dai Nippon Printing, Weyerhaeuser, Kimberly-Clark and Akzo Nobel. New entrants Adobe and Mitsubishi were rated 409 and 365 respectively.


Xerox and UPM-Kymmene slipped from the global list.


Story by John Davies