Corporate Ghana gears up for 17th Club 100 Awards

With effect from this year’s edition of the Ghana Club 100, which will be unveiled this Friday, November 23 in Accra, GIPC will consult with the various sector regulators to ensure that each nominee for membership is in good standing.

This is to ensure that club members are not in financial or operational difficulties that do not readily show up in their audited accounts, which are used to determine membership and the rankings.

In the 2017 edition Unibank ranked 6th, only to be liquidated by the Bank of Ghana barely six months later for insolvency which its audited financials for the previous year had not exposed, and the GIPC has learnt a lesson from this.

After turning its attention to the potential effects of the 2018 budget proposals presented to Parliament a week ago by Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, members of corporate Ghana are returning their focus to issues of market positioning, corporate reputation and competitiveness of financial performance as the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre prepares to unveil the 2018 edition of its prestigious Ghana Club 100 which ranks the top 100 predominantly privately owned companies in the country.

The composition of the latest edition will be announced on Friday evening at the Kempinski Hotel in Accra and Ghana’s leading corporations will be there in force, hoping not only to make the list but to be highly ranked as well.

This is the 17th edition, the inaugural edition having been unveiled in 1998.

Membership of the Ghana Club 100 confers not just prestige but practical benefits such as high ratings by both the local and international business communities including financiers, suppliers, service providers, business to business customers, equity investors, the professional work force and business regulators.

Membership is highly regarded not just because it is organized by the frontline state institution for investment promotion and facilitation, but also because it, and the rankings, are determined entirely by objective, quantitative criteria, this process executed by Ernst & Young (EY), one of the most widely respected audit and management consultancy firms.

Since the beginning of this week, corporate executives have been increasingly agitated, some of them using various channels to try and obtain information as to their fate from GIPC or EY ahead of the formal unveiling this coming Friday. However both GIPC and EY are keeping a tight lid on the identities of the members for the 2018 edition and how they rank.

Ghana Club 100 membership and rankings are determined by three criteria. One is size, measured by each company’s turnover. Another is profitability measured by three year average return on equity. The third is growth measured by three year compounded annual growth rate. Weights are given each criteria to determine overall rankings.

This year’s event is under the theme: Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship; Opportunities for Growth and Job Creation.

According to GIPC’s chief executive, Yofi Grant, this year’s Club 100 initiative aims at serving as a springboard for forging partnerships between Ghanaian and foreign businesses, showcasing the country’s industrialization potentials, gaining support from government for enhancement of the competitiveness of the corporate sector and developing open information within the corporate sector.

There will be recognition for the best companies in: agriculture and agri-business; financial services; ICT; services; infrastructure; oil and mining; manufacturing; tourism; health; and education. Special awards will also be conferred for UNICEF’s Coalition of Children, for corporate social responsibility and for the Company of the Future.

At last year’s edition, Newmont Golden Ridge, which operates Newmont’s second gold mine at Akyem ranked 1st, followed by MTN, Goil, Goldfields and Vivo Energy in that order.