It is bizarre that St. Louis, founded in 1764 by a group of intrepid French pioneers on the banks of the Mississippi, would engage in constant civic self-flagellation. In other words, what is the source of the often-heard sentiment: “St. Louisans are their own worst enemies”?
I pose this question as I heard Clayco founder Bob Clark recently explain on The 314 Podcast that St. Louis has lost a ton of Fortune 500 companies over the years. I agree with Clark on just about everything else he said, but I have to take some exception to this point, as it frames St. Louis’ large company history in an overly negative light.
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In fairness, the Fortune 500 metric is a bit tricky in its application. For example, the list includes privately held companies but only if they disclose their financials to a federal regulatory agency. Thus, St. Louis financial firm Edward Jones is on the list, but neither Enterprise Mobility nor World Wide Technology appear, despite having substantially higher revenues.
While companies come and go on the list, for the past few years, the low-end revenue cutoff has ranged between $6.4 billion in 2023 to $7.1 billion in 2024. Applying close to an average of the past two years, and including large privately held companies, the fact is that St. Louis today hosts 14 Fortune 500 equivalent companies.
By contrast, when I joined the workforce in St. Louis in 1975, St. Louis hosted eight equivalent Fortune 500 companies. Thus, 50 years later, St. Louis has witnessed a more than 50 percent net increase! Significantly, this large company concentration is substantially greater than that of Indianapolis, Nashville, and Kansas City, often held up as our “competitors.”
While St. Louis has lost the headquarters of some big companies, new companies have arisen and others have been attracted here over the past 50 years, which provides hope and some context to St. Louisans who might otherwise become dejected from the narrative of decline that seems to dominate.
Three of the biggest Fortune 500 “losses” over the past 50 years have actually turned out rather well: McDonnell Douglas/Boeing, Monsanto/Bayer, and Ralston Purina/Nestle.
Today, the historic McDonnell Douglas company is part of Boeing Defense, Space & Security. McDonnell Douglas developed, among other strategic U.S. assets, the F-4 Phantom, one of the longest-lived fighter jets in American history. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. just awarded Boeing a $20 billion contract to develop the next-generation F-47 stealth fighter. The amount could grow much larger over the next decade.
In the case of Monsanto, despite its legal challenges, St. Louis now serves as the North American headquarters of the Crop Science division of Bayer. Along with the Danforth Plant Science Center, St. Louis is the agtech and plant science research capital of the world.
Finally, Ralston Purina, now Nestle Purina Pet Care, is the crown jewel of the Nestle family of companies worldwide and employs more than 2,500 workers in downtown St. Louis.
Maintaining perspective is important. To be sure, St. Louis has its challenges, which the community will strive to resolve; at the same time, St. Louis has many strengths, upon which it will continue to build.
In the spirit of the city’s French pioneer founders, St. Louis is on its way to creating the next generation of Fortune 500 companies. Under the leadership of the late Dr. William Danforth, St. Louis has built a reputation as one of the more attractive cities in the U.S., outside of the coasts, in which to build a startup. St. Louis assets such as Washington University, Saint Louis University, Cortex, the Danforth Plant Science Center, T-Rex, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Arch Grants, and BioSTL have come together to create an environment for the incubation and growth of great new St. Louis companies over the coming decades. This is the result of a renewed pioneer spirit reuniting with a 260-plus year tradition of excellence in St. Louis.
After attending Saint Louis Priory School, the University of Pennsylvania, and Saint Louis University School of Law, Joe Schlafly worked from 1980 to 2015 for Stifel, which today is almost a Fortune 500 company, but not quite. He lives in St. Louis and remains actively involved with several nonprofits, including Arch Grants.
