Where brands come from and where they end up

What is counted

177 origin countries and 173 owner HQ countries appear in the base. Brands that are only licensed in, only part-owned, or have no current owner on record are left out, not counted as domestic.

The largest cross-border flows

The 12 biggest origin-to-owner pairs where the two countries differ, 547 brands in all (23.7% of the 2,310 foreign-owned brands). Band width is the number of brands. Domestic flows (a brand owned from its own country) are left out of the chart because they are far larger; they are in the ranked table below.

Origin to owner country, ranked

The 30 largest of 849 origin and owner-country pairs, including domestic ones, out of 11,966 brands.

Net position by country

Brands that began in a country minus brands owned by companies headquartered there, both counted within the same 11,966-brand base. A positive figure means more brands began there than are owned from there. Shown: the 10 largest positive and 10 largest negative of 178 countries. Counts, not shares, because the figure is a difference.

United States has the largest positive net (+245); Japan the largest negative (-99). Net figures sum to zero across all countries.

Who owns the most foreign brands, and whose brands are most owned from abroad

The definitions are those of foreign ownership by country: a brand is foreign-owned when its ultimate controlling owner is headquartered in a country other than the brand's origin. That page ranks origin countries and breaks each down by owner, owner company and category on a page per country. This page differs in two ways: it restricts to live brands, and it adds the owner-side view (which countries' companies hold the most foreign brands), which the other page does not rank. Origin-side figures below can therefore differ slightly from that page.

Origin countries with fewer than 15 brands in the base are not ranked; their shares rest on too few brands.

By category for the 5 largest origin countries

Brands in the base by top-level category, split into owned from the same country and owned from abroad. Where a category has fewer than 5 brands the share is not shown, only the counts.

Headquarters in tax-domicile jurisdictions

586 of the 11,966 brands (4.9%) sit under an ultimate owner whose recorded HQ is in one of Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Jersey. Some of these groups are run from elsewhere or listed in other markets, so their flows may say more about where a holding company is registered than where decisions are made.

How this was computed

• Brands: every brand not marked discontinued (12,221). Origin is the country where the brand began, as recorded on its page.
• Owner: the current controlling owner (owned outright or at least 50%, no territorial limit), followed up through controlling subsidiaries to the ultimate parent. The owner's HQ is the country where Brandtree's records place that company's head office.
• A flow is one brand moving from its origin country to its owner's HQ country. Domestic means the two are the same. Net position is origins minus owner-HQ brands in the same base. Percentages use the 11,966-brand base unless the column says otherwise.
• Data as of 16 October 2026.

What this does not show

• It does not show why brands moved or whether a flow is good or bad, and it does not rank owners or countries by quality.
• A brand's origin is where it began, which may differ from where it is made or sold today. An owner's HQ is where the owner's records place its head office, not where it operates or where its shareholders live.
• Tax-domicile holding companies (Switzerland (198), Netherlands (164), Ireland (96), Luxembourg (69), Bermuda (52), Cayman Islands (6) and Jersey (1)) can make HQ misleading, so a brand under such an owner may be economically tied to another country. These 586 brands are counted at the recorded HQ, not reassigned.
• Brandtree adds brands mainly through the filings of large groups, so the sample over-represents brands bought by multinationals and under-represents small independent domestic brands. Figures describe the brands tracked here, not every brand in a country.
• Brands with only licensed, minority or no recorded ownership (255 of 12,221 live brands) are outside every count.