First,
we tip our hats to the giants on this year’s
List of Leaders — companies such as McLean-based
candy maker Mars Inc., for example. It may always
be the state’s biggest private company. At
an estimated $17 billion in annual revenues last
year, even if the 14 companies behind it teamed up
they’d still be a couple of billion short.
Or Freddie Mac, which towers every year over Virginia’s
public companies, including heavyweights such as
Dominion Resources and General Dynamics.
But
don’t be dulled by these repeat winners, because
the top spots are not where the action is. It’s
more fun to see the moves in the middle of the pack,
such as Chantilly-based Patton Harris Rust & Associates,
the ninth-largest engineering firm that this year
beat out the three firms it tied with last year.
Or to note the new players, such as Richmond-based
Genworth Financial, which spun off last year from
General Electric and is now the state’s sixth-largest
public company.
Not that Virginia isn’t grateful for the big
companies. Especially Los Angeles-based Northrop
Grumman, which employs more than 29,000 people in
three
divisions here, the biggest being Northrop Grumman Newport News with 19,000
workers at its shipbuilding facility.
The big companies and many of the smaller ones, both
public and private, are among 18 sectors in this
year’s listings, which cover accounting, law
firms and insurance, as well as the state’s largest private and public
colleges and universities.
Even as we present this listing, mergers and acquisitions
have already begun changing the market. In banking,
Alabama-based SouthTrust merged with Charlotte,
N.C.-based Wachovia, which already leads the Virginia market. Early last month,
New York-based insurance broker USI acquired Falls Church-based Patterson//Smith,
the state’s 11th-largest firm. USI was already the third-largest broker
in Virginia and this expanded presence in the Washington, D.C., market is expected
to raise its revenues about $11 million this year.
The telecommunications sector is seeing the most
upheaval. Last year Cingular swallowed up AT&T Wireless, and in December the proposed merger of Sprint
and Nextel was announced. If that deal goes through later this year as proposed,
the new company would stay in Nextel’s current corporate offices in Reston,
and Nextel’s CEO Timothy M. Donahue would become chairman.
New to the List of Leaders this year is a ranking of the 25 largest credit
unions in Virginia, based on data from the National Credit Union Administration.
These are major financial institutions: the largest, Navy Federal Credit Union
in Merrifield, has more than $22.5 billion in assets. Northern Virginia dominates
the list, with a dozen of the top 25, including five of the top 10.
Of course, there are a lot of sectors not included.
We don’t have a list
for the biggest development companies, for example. We haven’t done venture
capitalists recently, or HMOs. So we’re open to suggestions for what
to include next year. These lists don’t tell the full story of a company
or of Virginia’s diverse economy, but they’re a good start. Help
us make them better.
— The Editors
Comments, Questions, Suggestions? Or to order additional copies contact: Doug
Forshey, Publisher
(804) 649-6998
