Every year since 2004, the Danish business newspaper Børsen has compiled a list of the 1,000 largest companies in Denmark as measured by revenue.
This year is no different, and this week they published their list of the largest companies of 2025.
It is, of course, interesting to see which companies find themselves at the top of this list, but several broader narratives also emerge from it.
A.P. Møller-Mærsk at number one
The top ten list is as follows:
- A.P. Møller-Mærsk – This shipping and logistics company held the same spot it occupied last year, despite a 13.5% decline in 2025.
- Novo – This pharmaceutical company held onto second place with a 6.4% increase in revenue from the previous year.
- DSV – This shipping and logistics company held onto third place, a position it also held on last year’s list, with a massive 48% growth in revenue compared with the previous year.
- Vestas – This wind turbine manufacturer and service company held onto fourth place, where it had also been the previous year, with 9% growth in revenue.
- Arla – This dairy company rose by one spot to fifth place with a 9.5% increase in revenue.
- Andel – This energy and fiber-network company rose by two spots in 2025, with a 24.4% increase in revenue compared with the previous year.
- United Shipping & Trading Company – This company, whose primary industry is shipping but which also owns many other separate operations, fell two spots to seventh place with a 10.4% decline.
- Carlsberg – This brewery rose a single spot on the list to eighth place with an 18.8% increase in revenue.
- ISS – This facilities management company fell two spots on the list compared with the previous one, with 1.1% growth in revenue.
- Lego – This toy company stayed put at tenth place, as it had the previous year, with a strong 12.4% increase in revenue compared with the previous year.
Positive growth trajectories
The general narrative in the report was a positive one. 2025 saw 4.6% growth in revenue compared with the year before.
The total revenue of the 1,000 largest companies in Denmark in 2025 was a whopping 5,012 billion Danish kroner.
Compared with the first year for which Børsen made their list, 2003, this represents more than a doubling of revenue from 2,027 billion Danish kroner.
Growth concentrated at the top
In the article in Børsen, it is also noted that much of the growth in revenue is credited to the significant revenues and growth of the ten largest companies.
The ten largest companies are responsible for 32.2% of the revenue of all the top 1,000 companies. Compare this with the first list, released in 2004, when the top ten companies were responsible for only 26.9% of the revenue.
In the article, experts the journalists spoke with suggest that this consolidation of revenue among the largest companies is in large part the product of mergers and acquisitions.
The propensity for mergers and acquisitions is attributed to the ownership structures of some of these larger companies, which either have very powerful owning families, cooperative structures, or powerful foundations behind them.