Bradford supermarket chain Morrisons - which has come top of the T&A/Grant Thornton Top 50 - is one of the few large employers in the district to have stayed in local ownership.

The last 12 months have seen big changes in the business profile of the district - with well-established firms such as Watmoughs, Allied Colloids and S Jerome being taken over by firms outside the area.

The top six companies are the same as 12 months ago, with Empire Stores, Yorkshire Co-operatives and N G Bailey also making clear progress among the leaders.

Morrisons heads the list with a six per cent rise in turnover to £2.2 billion, well ahead of the number two company BBA Group at £1.1 billion.

Others in the top half dozen are Ellis & Everard, Grattan, and Provident Financial.

But when it comes to profits BBA leads the table at £156.7 million, just ahead of Morrisons at £151.4 million.

Roland Clark, a partner at the Bradford office of Grant Thornton, says that to reflect the changed pattern of ownership the Top 50 table has been revised to give a better picture of what's going on in the local business world.

The Top 50 list now includes 16 firms which are subsidiaries of other UK companies and nine which are foreign owned - two each from Germany, Switzerland, France and the USA, and one with a Japanese parent company.

Mr Clark said: "The Europeanisation of our local economy continues, with the international links also bringing in the US and Japan.

"The emphasis, though, is on European ownership. People have heard a lot about the Euro and how it might affect them. They probably thought it wouldn't, but there will be lots of people around Bradford who are employed by companies whose prime currency will be the Euro.

"Bradford as much as anybody, perhaps more than most, will have to get used to, at least in the companies they work for, dealing in Euros."

Across the whole list turnover has gone up year on year by 7.4 per cent, although that disguises some where turnover has gone up significantly and others where it has decreased. That is pretty closely matched by a rise in profits overall of 7.2 per cent.

"A steady performance." said Roland Clark, "but not wildly exciting. These results are, of course, in the main before people started talking of recession."

Bradford's economy is heavily weighted towards manufacturing and there are a lot of manufacturing companies in the list.

"A close examination of the Top 50 reveals that Bradford is an area of many other skills from electronics and finance to poultry farming and printing - activities which could help to keep the local economy fairly stable, even if not as profitable as it might like," Mr Clark added.

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