ok i just tested this, but i made some assumptions;

when you say "

I THINK you are saying "If I pass this string 'd;c;b;a;e', i want the companies ordered in that order, instead of normal alphabetical order"

If I read that right, then this works correctly. my example is using sys.objects as sample data. so you see Defaults, then check constraints, then foreign keys in that order, for example:

oh yeah, like many good solutions, you need the DelimitedSplit8K function:

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Tally+Table/72993/

select * from sys.objects

OUTER apply master.dbo.delimitedsplit8k('d;c;b;a;e',';') myfn

ORDER BY CASE WHEN LEFT(name,1) = myfn.Item THEN 1 ELSE 2 END,myfn.ItemNumber