Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) has been named as the most valuable brand in the Middle East, and is one of only five regional brands to secure a place in a new global ranking of the world's 500 biggest brands.

ADNOC's brand has been valued at $8.9 billion by consultancy Brand Finance in its Global 500 2019 list, making it the 206th most valuable brand globally, the study found.

It is the first time that any of the Middle East's national oil companies has appeared in the ranking. Brand Finance's CEO David Haigh told Zawya in a telephone interview on Monday that the reason for this was that it was the first year for which it had reliable data for the company.

Haigh said that Brand Finance "wants to value all of the most valuable brands in the world", and can easily assess the value of publicly-quoted companies because data on recent financial results is available, as are forward-looking analysts' forecasts.

"But we've always said that if we have data provided to us and we believe that it's reliable, then we will actually use that data to include other brands. This is particularly relevant in markets where there are a lot of private companies - places like China, India, Russia, even Germany," he said. "In the past, people have said to us... 'why isn't so-and-so in there?'. And we say 'if we don't have the data, we can't do it', but we're entirely open to them providing us with the data.”

When asked about Saudi Arabia's national oil company, he said Saudi Aramco (whose intial public offering is now likely to take place in 2021, according to the latest statement from the kingdom's energy minister, Khalid Al Falih) could be included in the future.  Haigh added that "we were disappointed not to get Aramco data this year".

"I believe we tried, but it didn't work out," he said, adding that if more data on the company's financial results became available as a result of any public listing process, it will be included in future.

"For the moment, we're not able to include Aramco, but the second (the data is) available, we will. Given that it's supposed to be a $1 trillion or a $2 trillion company, clearly it's going to be a very big brand," Haigh said.

ADNOC's listing as the region's most valuable brand knocked UAE telecommunications company Etisalat into second place from its top spot last year. It is the 226th-most valuable firm globally, dropping nine places in the ranking despite its brand value increasing by 7.8 percent to $8.3 billion.

Saudi Telecommunications Company, STC, is the third-most valuable Middle East firm, ranked 284th globally with a value of $7.1 billion. Emirates (329th globally, valued at $6.3 billion) and Qatar National Bank (405th, $5.04 billion) make up the remaining regional firms in the top 500.

Globally, Amazon was named as the world's biggest brand, with a value of $187.9 billion, gaining 24.6 percent in the last year. Apple was the second-biggest brand, but its value only grew by 5 percent over the last 12 months, to $153.6 billion. A list of the 10 biggest global brands and their values appears below.

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London-based Brand Finance calculates the value of each brand using a Royalty Relief approach - essentially, working out the likely future revenues attributable to a brand and creating a value that the brand's owner would be able to achieve by licensing it. Findings from this year's rankings will be presented during a panel session at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday.

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(Reporting by Michael Fahy; Editing by Mily Chakrabarty)

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