Ingram's May 2024

SPRINT CORP. Year Founded: 1899 Headquarters: Overland Park, Kan. Sector: Telecommunications Number of Employees: 83,000+ (peak)

TENSION CORP. Year Founded: 1886 Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo. Sector: Office Products, Packaging & Automation Number of Employees: 855

It had a Spartan beginning as a rural telephone company in Abilene, Kan., back in 1899, morphing along the way into various headquarters locations, brands and service lines. At its zenith, though, it was Sprint Corp., and the largest private sector employer in the Kansas City region: More than 19,000 at its peak here, serving mobile-phone customers in an increasingly competitive field. Sprint not only put this region into any national conversation about major telecom service providers, it changed the very landscape of commercial real estate when it opened its 2 million world headquarters in Overland Park in 1997. After various pursuits in consolidation as a hunter, it ended up being the target itself when T-Mobile came calling with a $26 billion buyout check. Along the way, Sprint provided this region with a host of high-profile leaders, including CEOs Paul Henson, Bill Esrey, Gary Forsee and Dan Hesse, who orchestrated the company’s $22 billion sale to Japan’s Softbank in 2013.

Defying the old bromide about the fate of family businesses in the hands of a multiple generations, Kansas City’s Tension Corp. has evolved from its founding as Berkowitz & Co. to become a global provider of business envelopes, printed products, packaging and automation solutions, and is now headed by Bill Berkley, the founder’s great-grandson. The company adopted the Tension Envelope brand in 1944, and since then has been an industry model of innovation and process improvement in the printing, folding and processing of materials for corporate clients’ mass mailings and marketing efforts. More than just a solid company, Tension Corp., as the brand is positioned today, has produced a steady stream of good corporate citizens. From its ranks came Dick Berkley, who was mayor of Kansas City for a decade starting in the late 1970s, and both Bert Berkley, who turned 101 this spring, and Bill Berkley have been extensively engaged in civic and philanthropic organizations here.

UMB Year Founded: 1913 Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo. Sector: Banking, Financial Services Number of Employees: 3,780

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS HEALTH SYSTEM Year Founded: 1906 Headquarters: Kansas City, Kan. Sector: Health Care Number of Employees: 14,769

Nearly a decade ago, UMB surpassed its corporate cousin (both came out of the extended Kemper family banking tree) as the bank with the greatest volume of assets and deposits in one of the nation’s most competitive banking markets. That trendline is still headed up: Just last month, UMB announced it was doling out $2 billion to acquire Heartland Financial, a Midwestern holding company that itself had picked up Bank of Blue Valley in 2019. UMB has a long history of Kemper family leadership, including the succession from R. Crosby Kemper Jr. to one son, Alexander (Sandy) Kemper, then another, R. Crosby III. In 2004, Peter de Silva interrupted that bloodline by assuming the top role, retaining his predecessors’ commitment to the broader community as civic champion. and Mariner Kemper oversees the reins of the banking empire. That regional baton is in the hands of Jim Rine since 2018, who earlier this year also assumed duties as president of the bank’s holding company.

Health care in the Kansas City market is dominated by three large organizations, but the biggest of those is The University of Kansas Health System, which just seems to get bigger and bigger. Just this year, for example, it put the finishing touches on the acquisition of Olathe Health System, announced last year. That pushed 2023 revenues past the $15 billion mark, making this public-health authority the second-largest organization in the region. That was a remarkable turnaround from 1998, when the state of Kansas cut its ties to a financially dubious operation. But savvy leadership under CEO Bob Page and market president Tammy Peterman has made its flagship hospital the biggest acute-care facility in the region through its relentless focus on patient satisfaction. The growth continues, now in a new direction—east—as the system has signed an operating agreement with Liberty Hospital on the Missouri side.

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May 2024

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