2006 Europe's Hot Growth Scoreboard

The annual Europe's 500 list of fast growing, job-creating companies is compiled by Europe's 500--Entrepreneurs for Growth, a Brussels-based not-for-profit membership and networking organization representing 2,000 high growth entrepreneurs. Europe's 500 receives support from Microsoft and KPMG, but they are not involved in the preparation of the list.

For the third year in a row, BusinessWeek has teamed up with Europe's 500 to publish this annual ranking, which is compiled by Europe's 500 from data supplied by the companies and other sources. Both private and publicly-held companies headquartered in the 25 European Union member states, plus Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland, are eligible to be considered. The analysis looks at the performance of the companies over a three-year period.

To qualify, companies must have been founded before 2003, have no more than 5,000 employees at the start of the three-year reference period (as of December 31, 2002) and no fewer than 50 at the end (December 31, 2005), and demonstrate employment and revenue growth during that period. The list focuses on employment growth, and winners are ranked using the Birch (Employee Growth) Index, devised by economist David Birch at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which multiplies absolute job growth by relative job growth to determine the employment-creation power of differently sized enterprises.

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