St. Louis is tied for seventh place with a few other cities with a total of 7 Fortune 500 companies. It's interesting to see cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle having fewer than St. Louis.



It looks like they miscounted. There are a total of eight Fortune 500 companies if you look at the list, but they only mention st. louis as having seven. It mentions Express Scripts as being in "Maryland Heights". Is that not St. Louis? Emerson isn't in "St. Louis" then either.. interesting.



http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/ ... 07/cities/

Where did you read this?

The Fortune 500 doen't go by Metros, but by independent cities, I believe. That would definately explain Los Angeles, whose metro has many successful independent cities.

It goes NOT by where they are actually located but what city they are REPORTED that they were in...

example : Arch Coal... Address: 1 City Place Dr., St. Louis, MO 63141 which is actually Creve Coeur. For some reason Express Scripts put Maryland heights instead of the generic “St. Louis”…



BTW Olin is at #625 (fortune 1000 list) but is listed as Clayton… and Kellwood is at # 841 and listed as chesterfield…. Both not listed under “St. Louis”. Gives STL 20 Fortune 1000 companies and the rest of Missouri only 9… (The Illinois side had zero companies on the list that I saw)





Microsoft isn't included in Seattle's total because they are in "Redmond"… and Beverly Hills (not LA) is where Hilton Hotels is based. I really wish they would categorize it by MSA. - but hey -- we are looking at the list free....

I'm guessing the list was compiled by zip codes -- Maryland Heights is a 630 and those all list as their own cities, whereas 631s all list as 'St. Louis'



Not the best way for Fortune to categorize locations, though.

tbspqr wrote:It goes NOT by where they are actually located but what city they are REPORTED that they were in...

example : Arch Coal... Address: 1 City Place Dr., St. Louis, MO 63141 which is actually Creve Coeur. For some reason Express Scripts put Maryland heights instead of the generic “St. Louis”…



BTW Olin is at #625 (fortune 1000 list) but is listed as Clayton… and Kellwood is at # 841 and listed as chesterfield…. Both not listed under “St. Louis”. Gives STL 20 Fortune 1000 companies and the rest of Missouri only 9… (The Illinois side had zero companies on the list that I saw)





Microsoft isn't included in Seattle's total because they are in "Redmond"… and Beverly Hills (not LA) is where Hilton Hotels is based. I really wish they would categorize it by MSA. - but hey -- we are looking at the list free....

^^ It is a horrible way to document "location"... but Olin is listed in Clayton (63105)... The other two in the metro area that are listed otherwise are both 630**: Maryland Heights (63043) and Chesterfield (63017).



It would benefit them (us?) to add (in addition to "city" and "state" classification) "MSA"... I will call Richard Parsons (CEO of Time Warner) and tell him to add that to the list (TimeWarner owns Fortune and CNN)...

Heh, or companies should change their listed headquarters to suit studies like these that don't take reality into account.

Tysalpha wrote:I'm guessing the list was compiled by zip codes -- Maryland Heights is a 630 and those all list as their own cities, whereas 631s all list as 'St. Louis'

In my less enlightened days, I spent a year living in Maryland Heights. And, as you may guess, I don't miss it.



In that year, I received mail listing my city of residence as Maryland Heights, Saint Louis, Creve Coeur, Bridgeton and Hazelwood. I guess because the zip was almost always correct (63043), that's why I didn't have issues with the mail.



It seems like rankings like these should be based on the MSA, but at any rate, it's nice to see that Saint Louis ranks so well after years of high-profile mergers and acquisitions which resulted in the loss of several corporate headquarters locally.

http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stor ... rround=lfn



Eight St. Louis firms make '07 Fortune 500

St. Louis Business Journal - 4:53 PM CDT Monday, April 16, 2007



Good news is they DO list Express Scripts as a STL company....

what bothers me is that people always start tearing up about the loss of May, TWA, Union Pacific, etc. St. Louis has generated completely new companies as well. Express Scripts is number 2; was that even a household name 10 years ago? I don't think so. St. Louis has a lot to be proud of. St. Louis is on the up and up. Look at Chicago, only four more than us? I know having a lot of Fortune 500's isn't EVERYTHING, but for a city of 8-9 million vs. our being just under 3 million, we're doing really well in my opinion.

Not to be a nay sayer -- but just as Express Scripts is listed as "Maryland Heights" Chicago actually has more like 63 companies based in their metro area....



http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/ ... es/IL.html



The Vast majority of these in Illinois are from Chicago area ... the exceptions I found on the list are Caterpillar (Peoria), Aventine Renewable Energy Holdings (Pekin), Gardner Denver (Quincy), State Farm Insurance Cos (Bloomington), and Archer Daniels Midland (Decatur).. when you take those 5 along with the one additional one from Indiana which is in the Chicago suburbs (NiSource of Merrillville, IN).



I agree that STL isn't doing badly, but by any stretch of the imagination we aren't anywhere near NYC, LA or Chicago... population considered or not. If we hadn't lost nearly a dozen companies (as you mentioned)... we would be close (not to mention probably bigger than Seattle or Phoenix in metro size) but lets not get ahead of ourselves.



PS I thought for sure Isle of Capri (Creve Coeur) would be at least on the Fortune 1000 list... #1000 on the list had a revenue of 1,570.5 million... they only had 988.0 million according to their 2006 SEC filing. Also Smurfit Stone (Creve Coeur) is listed as Chicago for their corporate headquarters. I’m not sure if that’s a “corporate headquarters” or just another “corporate location”.

Moot point. Express Scripts just moved their HQ to UMSL campus. They "should" be listed in a 631xx area code now.

I stand corrected. I thought only 11 for a city of Chicago's size to be low.

why is smurfit stone listed as Chicago?

^ because its headquarters are on Michigan Ave., below the river right next to the Hard Rock Hotel.

^ Not to naysay the naysayer, but there are only 33 Fortune 500 companies in the state of Illinois. If you look on that list of Illinois, the last 30 or so are past the number 500. Your point is well taken, though, that many of Chicago's largest 500 companies are in the suburbs: Walgreens, etc.

Smurfit has dual headquarters in Chicago and Clayton, with Chicago being the "official" headquarters. There was talk a few years back of consolidating the headquarters just to Clayton, but I don't think anything came of that except talk.

^ What "came of it" is that Smurfit is no longer in Clayton. It consoldiated local operations -- from both Clayton and Alton -- into one of the new CityPlace buildings in Creve Coeur.

^^ They certainly have their name on the City Place Six building... I was under the impression that they consolidated all their STL operations here.



stlmike: I never said all those companies were fortune 500, but just to appease you... my previous statement should be amended (because I made a mistake in my previous reporting) to say:



Chicago actually has more like 60 Fortune 1000 companies based in their metro area.... The Vast majority of these in Illinois are from Chicago area ... the exceptions I found on the list are Caterpillar (Peoria), Aventine Renewable Energy Holdings (Pekin), Gardner Denver (Quincy), Deere (Moline), State Farm Insurance Cos and Country Insurance & Financial Services (Bloomington), and Archer Daniels Midland (Decatur).. when you take those 7 along with the one additional one from Indiana which is in the Chicago suburbs (NiSource of Merrillville, IN). Of those 60 companies, the 1 in Indiana and 29 of the companies from Illinois are in the Fortune 500 bringing the total Fortune 500 companies in the Chicagoland to 30.

So, to compare it accurately:



St Louis Metro:

Fortune 500: 8

Fortune 1000: 20



Chicagoland:

Fortune 500: 30

Fortune 1000: 60



I'd say we aren't doing too bad considering the fact that they have three times our population. According to the map, we only have 3 of the Fortune 500 located in the city proper.

According to the map, we only have 3 of the Fortune 500 located in the city proper.

Not bad! That's 1 Fortune 500 company for every 120,000 residents - why isn't St. Louis City considered the most (relatively) dense concentration of Fortune 500 companies in the world?!?! If only the rest of the metro area would keep up. We would have more than 20 Fortune 500 companies! (this post is not meant to be serious)

stlmike wrote:I'd say we aren't doing too bad considering the fact that they have three times our population. According to the map, we only have 3 of the Fortune 500 located in the city proper.

I agree, but you'll never convince the folks at the P-D and others in the local media that are constantly handwringing over our loss of corporate headquarters to mergers, consolidations, and relocations like May Department Stores, McDonnell Douglas, Southwestern Bell, etc.



And, alas, 103 years have passed since we hosted the Olympics and the World's Fair. Boo-hoo.

I agree, but you'll never convince the folks at the P-D and others in the local media that are constantly handwringing over our loss of corporate headquarters to mergers, consolidations, and relocations like May Department Stores, McDonnell Douglas, Southwestern Bell, etc.

Odd, but I have a 20-some year archive of the P-D at my fingertips, and I can't seem to find any "handwringing" at all in the past 2-3 years, after which I stopped looking.



Now, just maybe, the real problem in this town is that all of the CEOs of all the large corporations get together once a month to talk about civic policy, and no one in the media can even tell you who they are, let alone what they talk about. And just maybe, the amount of public subsidy that goes to these large corporations and other megaprojects is grossly disproprtionate to the amount of jobs they create, especially if you accept as fact that small business is the engine for job growth, while large corporations, in aggregate, tend to show very low job growth.



In turn, this may explain why local job (and population) growth have lagged the national average since anyone on this board has been alive.



Or we could just continue to make unsubstantiated claims about "constant handwringing." Your call.

bonwich wrote:Odd, but I have a 20-some year archive of the P-D at my fingertips, and I can't seem to find any "handwringing" at all in the past 2-3 years, after which I stopped looking.

Even in David Nicklaus' columns?

^ I'd say perusing Nicklaus' columns would be a good start.



Bonwich, I shouldn't have singled out the Post-Dispatch, but let's get real. I know I've read editorials over the years that bemoaned the wave of mergers that resulted in the loss of locally-based corporate headquarters. I distinctly remember one written several years ago that said we were in danger of becoming a branch-office town like Memphis or Tulsa (I'm pretty sure those were among the cities mentioned). At any rate, whoever's doing the complaining, there's always someone out there reinforcing the tired idea that we can no longer compete as a region because _________ is being acquired by an out-of-town company. And, as you know, life goes on in our neither boom nor bust metro area.



FWIW, I don't disagree with your take on the most likely causes for our region's relatively slow job and population growth. No one with their eyes open has a problem identifying our region's problems, but it would sure be nice to have leaders that could fix them in my lifetime, so the needless complaining could finally end and our region could truly move forward. I just refuse to believe we should turn off the lights and split because May Department Stores, Southwestern Bell, McDonnell Douglas, and Boatmen's Bank are mere footnotes in our local business history.