Four leading Australian companies have ranked in the top 100 most valuable brands in the world, the local media WA Today reported on Wednesday.

According to the global market research leader Millward Brown and marketing giant WPP, the ANZ Bank, Commonwealth Bank, Westpac and the supermarket giant Woolworth were among the Brandz Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands list, said the report.

The Commonwealth Bank ranked 48th of the list, which is the highest in the four Australian companies. Its value was estimated at 17.7 billion US dollars, a 36 percent increase over the previous year.

The runner-up ANZ Bank ranked 52 with a value of 16.5 billion U. S. dollars, followed by the Westpac at 80 (11 billion US dollars) and Woolworth at 88 (10 billion US dollars).

The most valuable brand in the list again came to Apple with a calculated worth of 185 billion US dollars, ahead of Google (113 billion dollars) and IBM (112 billion dollars).

The valuations were based on the opinions of current and potential customers and also the financial data of the companies, the report said.

High rankings of the four Australian companies were attributed to the good performance of Australian economy and the mighty position of Australian dollars, the report quoted Millward Brown as saying.

BrandZ is a brand equity database which holds data on brands gathered from interviews with over 150,000 people every year in up to 400 studies around the world. The database is used to estimate brand valuations, and each year since 2006, has been used to generate a list of the top 100 global brands.