Sometimes, races are rather
boring. Before they even start, you know that the
heavyweight will win again. Other races are less
predictable, providing onlookers with a neck-and-neck
battle to the finish line. Our annual List of Leaders
offers both — the unsurprising
and the unpredictable.
Each year we know that Mars Inc., the famous McLean-based
candy maker, will easily top our list of the largest
private companies with estimated revenues of at least
$18 billion. Likewise, the Navy Federal Credit Union
has 2 million more members than the next closest competitor.
And Philip Morris USA has almost $9 billion more in
revenue than the No. 2 company on our divisions and
subsidiaries list.
Then there are lists where
competition is stiff. We saw new companies in the
No. 1 spot on five of our lists this year. For example,
KPMG took a firm hold on the top spot for the accounting
firms list, Dewberry edged out EMCOR Facilities Services
on the architectural and engineering firms list,
and Hunton & Williams
retook the lead as the state’s largest law firm.
Even when they’re predictable, our annual lists
of the largest companies in 18 industries offer a good
look at the state economy. Business was good for Virginia’s
top companies in 2006. For the most part, our lists
showed healthy increases in revenue across the board,
despite whispers of a slowing economy and the implications
of a cool down in the housing market.
On most lists, the state’s
leading companies saw decent growth in 2006. Most
of the accident and health and life insurers garnered
increased premiums, hospitals showed healthy upturns
in revenues, architects and engineers had increased
revenue from projects in Virginia, and banks saw
a rise in deposits.
Our annual surveys again showed
how more and more companies are merging. For example,
CB Richard Ellis firmed up its hold on top of the
list of commercial real estate firms after it acquired
the Trammel Crow Co., which was listed seventh last
year. With the acquisition, CB Richard Ellis’ portfolio
of Virginia properties jumped from 30.3 million to
46.1 million square feet of leasable space. On that
same list, Roanoke-based Hall Associates jumped several
spots by purchasing Milton Realty Co. of Lynchburg.
Mergers seem to be common for
law and accounting firms across the state. Five law
firms told us in this year’s
survey that they had been through mergers in the past
year. Six others opened new offices in places ranging
from Prince William County to Los Angeles and Shanghai,
China.
Our lists also reflect the
state’s biggest newcomers.
Look at MeadWestvaco Corp., which relocated from Connecticut
to Richmond last year, landing at the 12th spot on
the public companies list. Or note the addition of
the Marriott at City Center, a new hotel in Newport
News, to our conference hotels list. The hotel brought
25,000 square feet of upscale meeting space to the
Peninsula.
This year we tried to make our lists more easily understandable
and readable. The figures used to rank the companies
are in the right-hand column of each chart, except
for the lists of Virginia telephone companies. Because
phone companies are no longer required to report specific
state revenues, those charts are listed alphabetically.
Our lists don’t disclose other important facts
about these companies. For example, Sprint Nextel easily
dominates our public companies list, but the company
recently announced it would lay off 5,000 employees
to cut costs and it expects only a small revenue gain
for 2007. Turns out the company’s had trouble
keeping Nextel subscribers after its $36 billion merger
in 2005.
But there’s something to be said for charting
the biggest companies in the state. Monitoring their
progress from year to year allows us to get a good
picture of the state’s overall economic health.
