urbanSTL

bonwich wrote:We will assume you don't find the Wall Street Journal to be a good newspaper, either.

I believe Desiree J. Hanford wrote the story. And it appears that she writes for DOW JONES NEWSWIRES - and not the Wall Street Journal.



It's like AP writers in St. Louis or elsewhere writing a story that gets published on CNN.com or in the Chicago Sun-Times.



True, it made the Wall Street Journal, big deal. Is St. Louis the only region that has lost corporations? Certainly not. Maybe some media outlets are making a big deal out it because some people in St. Louis are choosing to make it a big deal in a negative way.



Face it, the brokerage industry is changing.



Also, Chicago is losing LaSalle. Seattle lost Boeing. Atlanta lost Bell South. Minneapolis, Dallas, Houston, Cleveland etc. have lost firms. Let's not forget about the bleeding of major firms Kansas City and Denver have suffered over recent years.



While it is unfortunate that St. Louis has bled some big companies, St. Louis is doing well - no exaggeration - to have 20 (19) F1000 companies with more on the way that are about to creep on the list. And St. Louis still has more big private firms than most of its peer cities. Do the research on Forbes 400. Many of them would easily rank on the F1000.



Anyway, it is sad and even frightening how some people in St. Louis are viewing this merger on the stltoday.com forums. Most seem uninformed.



I say, if some of you people don't want Wachovia to set up a $1.1-trillion dollar unit in St. Louis, call them and petition them to keep the unit in Richmond, Virginia. Richmond (and many other city/regions) would love to have them.

Hmm, well I will weigh in a bit late.



1. The hand wringing is to be expected. When I first heard about the merger this morning, it is what I thought about too. Right or wrong, St. Louis is all to often on the perceived "loosing side" of these mergers, with the HQ and the limelight ending up somewhere else. Just once I would like one of these big name, high profile mergers to result in St. Louis gaining a HQ instead of losing one. Spin it however you like (yes Arch I know some mergers, such as Ralston and Boeing have resulted in more local jobs), but the perception matters and the perception is negative.



2. Good to hear that St. Louis will be gaining the brokerage HQ from Richmond. While we will lose some jobs, others will be gained. I am most interested to hear if Wachovia will use this to try and enter the Missouri banking market. If so, unlike recent market additions like National City and Montgomery Bank, the jobs added for banking will be downtown. If we are going to add jobs, I could see this being a major source, from banking and maybe some trust operations.



3. For all of the good discussed above and on the previous pages, losing a local HQ for a national sub-HQ inherently comes with less certainty, no matter how we spin it. I still worry long term about the commitment of Wachovia to keeping jobs in St. Louis. It would help the region (and the state) tremendously if Missouri stepped up and tried to add more brokerage offices (ie. Bank of America, US Bank, etc.). The strong the region's stock of brokerage firms, the stronger the case for keeping the offices and jobs in the area.

bonwich wrote:

Today, the Wall Street Journal wrote:St. Louis In The Familiar Spot Of Losing A Headquarters



DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

May 31, 2007 2:30 p.m.





By Desiree J. Hanford

Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES





With the announcement that A.G. Edwards Inc. (AGE) is being acquired by Wachovia Corp. (WB), the St. Louis area finds itself in the all-too-familiar situation of losing another corporate headquarters.



The two regional brokerages announced the $6.8 billion deal Thursday, saying the combined retail brokerage organization will be based in A.G. Edwards' hometown of St. Louis. The other businesses, however, including research and investment banking, will be consolidated into Wachovia's existing lines of business. The acquisitions will make Wachovia, which is located in Charlotte, the second-largest retail brokerage in the U.S.



There are many familiar names that call St. Louis home, including Anheuser-Busch Cos. (BUD), Monsanto Co. (MON), Emerson Electric Co. (EMR) and Enterprise Rent-A-Car. The metropolitan area is the headquarters for 20 Fortune 1000 companies, including eight that are in the Fortune 500, according to the St. Louis Regional Chamber & Growth Association.



But St. Louis has also lost its fair share of headquarters. Earlier this decade, Ralston Purina Group was purchased by Nestle (Z.NES) and Trans World Airlines Inc. was acquired by American Airlines parent AMR Corp. (AMR). May Department Stores Co. was purchased by Federated Department Stores Inc. (FD) in 2005. Perhaps the biggest blow to the region was McDonnell Douglas becoming part of Boeing Corp. (BA) in 1997.

We will assume you don't find the Wall Street Journal to be a good newspaper, either.

The WSJ is anti-St. Louis. I'm canceling my subscription. How dare they report the facts?

The announcement yesterday of the AG Edwards was a shock to me. I was one of the first tenants to move into 60 North Ewing, the 12 story high rise in Laclede Towne/East. Edwards' initial building at Jefferson and Market was completed about a month after I moved in. I could see the rear of their building from my 7th floor apartment. I almost felt that we had been neighbors for a while.



I've dealt with Wachovia both on a personal and business basis since they entered the Philadelphia market in 1998. Their people are professional and courteous, but they cater to the high end market, both on a retail banking and lending level. Their small business interest rates are not competetive with other lenders in the area, and if you don't bring a certain amount of assets to the table, they do not want to be bothered with you. They paid naming rights to the Spectrum here, but they've also closed numerous branches in low and moderate income areas and they've reneged on their promise to lend a certain amount of money to low income area homeowners, something they were supposed to do as a requirement to purchase Philadelphia National Bank, the last local bank here. Bottom line: they may have a divisional HQ in St. Louis, I wouldn't expect a whole lot from them in local cultural or civic affairs.

^ Arch, to portray this merger as a one-sided positive deal if foolish. As with most things, there are positives and negative.



Positives are that St. Louis will be the divisional HQ for a larger firm with the potential of job additions for a variety of reasons (migration from Richmond, growth in the brokerage business, growth in Wachovia banking in the Midwest). This keeps strong the image of St. Louis as a brokerage market and if St. Louis plays its cards right, those who do loose jobs locally maybe picked up by other growing local firms or start new businesses. Those are clearly a lot of positives. Compared to something like the May-Federated deal, there are many more positives in this situation. It could be worse, we could be in the position of Richmond.



Yet, there are also negatives. First, lets start by reading this article from the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Link



This quote from that article is pretty important:

Richmond gained jobs when Wachovia Securities merged with New York-based Prudential Securities in 2003. New York lost 2,500 jobs.



"Sometimes we win, as we did when Prudential moved 1,000 people out of New York to Richmond," said Gregory Wingfield, president and chief executive officer of the Greater Richmond Partnership, the region's main economic-development agency. "Sometimes we lose."



Wachovia Securities' operations here provide support for all 2,600 offices across the country and 10,700 brokers.

Still so positive? Much like Richmond, today we are on the good side of the merger info. St. Louis will be adding jobs likely at the expense of Richmond. But what happens in the next deal? This loss of control (perhaps it is only perceived control) is what I believe many see as the negative from the merger. Sure a local name and independent business is gone, but I think many equate independence with security (ie. the jobs in STL are going no where with an independent firm unless someone really drops the ball [AG Edwards goes out of business or the state ticks them off like they did with Southwestern Bell]).



The Richmond situation is pretty similar from what I understand (and I maybe wrong on this) to what happened in the Nations Bank- Boatman's merger. Slowly, those assets that fueled the merger in the first place (the trust division of Boatman's) left town, finally with everything leaving with the Fleet merger.



Beyond this uncertainty, there is also simply the positive feeling from being the "winner" of such a merger. Most of the cities you throw out have "won" a few big time mergers (Cinci with Federated and P&G to start of the list). I think St. Louis would just like to see the home town win one and is that really so wrong?



Now on to this issue:

As I see it, these companies - AG Edwards and Wachovia - don't owe St. Louis or St. Louisans a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g in the big scheme of things. I know that is not what you are suggesting, but people seem to have their personal, emotional and civic psyches wrapped around these corporations a little too tight.



While corporations should be "good corporate citizens", when the sh*t hits the fan, most public companies are all about the shareholders. It's not about how long the company has resided on N. Jefferson Avenue. I know this isn't comforting to some people, but it is the reality.

You are of course right that companies are never really responsible to anything but their employees, customers, and owners, and for big time companies, these three factors never all are located in one geographic area, thereby making a connection to any one location impossible. But two things:



1. It is not surprising that St. Louis in particular is tied up in its cooperate names. In the last 50 years the region has seen itself bypassed by other metros. As a fall back, folks in the region always said "That's ok, we still have all of these major companies." Well as those companies and names go away, so do the ability of locals to use such facts as a shield from what's really wrong with the region. People are faced with a grim reality. Moreover, a whole generation of people were sold on the notion that the "White Knight" to turn around almost every problem that faced the region was to be the local civic muscle. When the civic muscle leaves town, people perceive that with it so goes the solution to regional problems.



2. Linking this back into the "perception of control" over local jobs, the loss of a local independent HQ makes a lot of people nervous if only because those who are in charge might no longer be local long time residents. While clearly businesses have fewer and fewer geographic ties all the time, there is something to be said for the notion that a top manager at AG Edwards might have lived in St. Louis for 15 or 20 years moving through different part of the company, and those years of living in St. Louis will somehow tied the company, its decisions, and the jobs to the region because the persons in-charge are tied to the region. This doesn't always secure jobs (look no further than Ed Whiteacre at Southwestern Bell), but I do think it gives the region a better chance at playing the "hometown" card in keeping and adding jobs. If a merger reduces this link (and I think most would agree that it does) then so too does the regions control over these jobs.

JMedwick, and you wrote all of that to say...?







Look man, it's business. Plain and simple. On top of that, St. Louis is still creating jobs DESPITE some headquarters losses. Come on, now.



Furthermore, I don't have crystal ball or Doppler Radar or anything to see future. I don't think you do either. It seems like you are getting ahead of yourself again, JMedwick. I wish I could forecast if Wachovia or some other company was going to ***** over St. Louis in the future, but I am not God.



Also, with that logic JMedwick, we could have said the same thing about Boeing. But what did they do? They added jobs. American Airlines is now recalling workers. Nestle-Purina moved jobs from California and put the Nestle-Purina Pet Care world headquarters in St. Louis. The Monsanto/Pharmacia/Pfizer merger/spinoff has yielded more jobs in St. Louis.



The ink isn't even dry on the deal, yet you and some people are already looking into future with a negative perspective, which frankly, none of you have control. And like I said, there are going to be more mergers and relocations affecting St. Louis-based companies. So brace yourselves.



What I think is "foolish" is the continuous "oh poor us" mentality. St. Louis can be so insular, that some of the citizenry truly has no clue as to why cities like Indianapolis and Charlotte are on its heels and cities like Minneapolis and Atlanta have passed it in many ways. Get out of St. Louis and explore.



It's exactly that "independent" (insular) mentality that puts St. Louis at risk of falling even farther behind, when the WORLD is becoming more interconnected.

bonwich wrote:

Arch City wrote:

ThreeOneFour wrote:

That would be my guess.

Great comments. I am being mocked, I guess, for criticizing the P-D (and Dow Jones Newswire) for their reporting of corporate HQ losses in St. Louis. While the reporting is legitimate, where are the articles on corporate HQ gains - including firms like Centene and World Wide Technology that have grown exponentially over the years?



No one can seem to answer that question. They seem to want to be depressed.

Well, I might mock you for claiming to have some sort of insight into the role the Edwards family played in the sell-out, and I might counter it by pointing out Dave Nicklaus' interview with Ben Edwards today in which Ben himself notes that he's had very little to do with AGE since he left. But that would be wrong.

Judging from the tone of the interview, Mr. Edwards didn't seem to happy with the deal.

JMedwick wrote:Yet oddly enough Arch, you have no problem forecasting a sunny future for this merger, dismissing all others who dare bring up that a negative final outcome is possible.



Do your God-like forecasting abilities apply only to sunny days?



All I am asking Arch is that you consider both sides. The Post, the WSJ, and people in St. Louis have every right (and every reason) to be weary of the outcome of yet another merger. The final outcome is a great unknown, with both positive and negative outcomes.

Where have I forecasted a "sunny future"? I specifically said,

"I wish I could forecast if Wachovia or some other company was going to f*** over St. Louis in the future....... "

Please. Don't be ridiculous.



So how in the hell does that forecast a "sunny future"? It doesn't.



I also said early on that while St. Louis' loses a F1000 (bad, bad, bad), it gains a $1.1-trillion unit (good, good, good). Furthermore, I said while St. Louis has lost HQ's (bad, bad, bad), not unlike any other city, it has also gained many HQ's (good, good, good). I pointed out the good, good, good to OFFSET all of the bad, bad, bad that keeps getting spewed.



So in essence, I have looked at both the negative and positive. Your hollow accusations don't add up. In fact, your accusation swings the other way around. Some of you refuse to see the positive and it's likely because you guys have this nagging pall of defeatism. For crying out loud, didn't St. Louis just win the World Series? Oh, I'm sorry, the team is now in the cellar - don't want to add to the depression.



For the record, you and others have the right to be depressed and defeated. I just hope another Civil War doesn't erupt because with these attitudes Boeing's St. Louis-based Integrated Defense/Future Combat System units won't even be able to help win the war. General Sherman would have his work cut out for him trying to rally the troops nowadays. He would probably burn down St. Louis instead of Atlanta.



Anyway.....enough of the jokes.

JMedwick wrote:The ink isn't even dry on the deal, yet you and some people are already looking into future with a positive perspective, which frankly, none of you have control.

Why don't you just jump off a bridge already? (Just kidding)

JMedwick wrote:All I tried to point out to you was that these both positive and negative outcomes are possible and therefore talking about the negative is not asinine.



You have a perception of this deal as a positive one. Others have a perception of this deal is a negative one. In the end, like most past mergers, the final outcome will be somewhere in between.

There's no need to point out that to me. I am fully aware of the positives and negatives as I have cited. Ultimately, control of the situation is beyond all pontificators. And I truly feel that it is asinine if one keeps dwelling on the negative and lamenting over corporations that died, essentially wiped off the face of the earth, over a decade ago.

JMedwick wrote:
But none of us knows the outcome so focusing on only the positive and bashing those who bring up the negative is foolish. To focus on only a positive outcome Arch is to stick your head in the sand, when you know no more than I do whether the final outcome will be positive or negative.

Again, you have grossly misunderstood. I think the positive outcome in the immediate is very clear. St. Louis is gaining a headquarters albeit a subsidiary. It is foolish and "sticking your head in the sand", in my opinion, to not accept this reality. What can you do to change the negative? Nothing. But one can embrace and accentuate the positive. Even if all jobs departed - the world doesn't end. While the negative would be job losses as well as transitional periods for impacted people, the positive is that people could go find other jobs since St. Louis is adding jobs. If not in St. Louis, go elsewhere. Change is constant.

JMedwick wrote:
It wears on people to seemingly always be on the "losing end" of these mergers and this fuels a lot of negativity. Perception matters. A "perceived" win one of these days would be a big deal for St. Louis (simply look at the Expresses Scripts merger). Negative perception may not always equal a negative deal, but there is nothing wrong with hoping that sometime St. Louis will be the "perceived" winner and in this case with AG Edwards gone there goes once again another opportunity to bring home a "perceived" winner.

I say, get over it or move to another city. Again, change is constant. I'm sure Tulsa wants back some of its oil companies. Harsh, I know. But again, it may be that too much of one's civic, personal, and civic pride is invested in a corporation. AB could leave or be merged tomorrow and I'd say the same thing. They're only businesses - and only the strong survive. Adapt.



Again, this merger isn't about St. Louis. It's about the shareholders just as Caremark's shareholders decided against merging with Express Scripts.



Ultimately, at this time, Wachovia has made a vote of confidence in St. Louis. I say accept it, because there is nothing else anyone can change.