Baton Rouge and the Fortune 500
Fortune released their annual Fortune 500 list today, which “ranks the top 500 U.S. closely held and public corporations as ranked by their gross revenue after adjustments made by Fortune to exclude the impact of excise taxes companies collect.” (Wikipedia) Big oil company ExxonMobil knocked off Wal-Mart to take the coveted number one position.
Amongst the top 500 companies are two from Louisiana (Entergy and the Shaw Group), with an additional four in the top 1000 (CenturyTel, Albemarle, Superior Energy Services and Pool). The Shaw Group is Baton Rouge’s claim to fame. At number 357, the Shaw Group posted $6,998,000,000 in revenue—in millions, by the way—which is a 22.3% increase from 2007. (Fortune) The year has been good to the Shaw Group, which moved up 69 spots. Albemarle is Baton Rouge’s other company in the top 1000 list at number 806. Moving up 18 spots from last year, Albemarle is a chemical company that posted $2,467,100,000. in revenue.
It’s good to see Louisiana putting on a strong show. It’s great to see Baton Rouge showing highly as well (the two companies from Baton Rouge are more highly ranked than the New Orleans ones). It’s important to note that we’re not last on this list. In fact, there are ten states that do not have a Fortune 500 company listed. However, our neighbor, Texas, is number one on the list with 64 companies.
Good job, Louisiana.
You can see more of the Louisiana companies on the list on Fortune’s web site. You can view the full list on Fortune’s web site.