Ingram's May 2024

WADDELL & REED Year Founded: 1937 Headquarters: Overland Park, Kan. Sector: Financial Services Number of Employees: 1,691 (peak)

YELLOW CORP. Year Founded: 1929 Headquarters: Overland Park, Kan. (until 2022) Sector: Transportation Number of Employees: 30,000+ (peak)

For nearly 80 years, Waddell & Reed built an increasingly influential presence in the world of wealth management, built on a model that relied on internal sales teams to pitch its mutual-fund tools—propriety and external—to clients. By 2014, though, the market was about to change, with actively managed funds losing favor among investors. From its peak of $135.63 billion in assets under management that year, AUM fell as precipitously as they had risen from their 2008 low of $47.6 billion. Still, there was hope that Waddell & Reed would remain a fixture here when it committed to moving its headquarters to a new office tower under construction Downtown. It was not to be: Eventually, it accepted a $1.7 billion buyout from an Australian company, Macquarie, which wanted W&R’s asset management operations, then sold off the wealth-management broker/dealer functions to San Diego-based LPL Financial in April 2021.

Blow out the candles: The centennial-anniversary planning was cut short by a year at Yellow, one of the biggest names in freight logistics. The firm made its home in the Kansas City area for most of its 99 years until debt—to the tune of $1.3 billion—eventually took the company down. That was just a year after it moved its headquarters from Overland Park to Nashville. One can argue that Yellow might have faded sooner had it not secured a $700 million in pandemic-relief lifeline from the federal government. That accounted for more than half the debt load that forced its bankruptcy filing last year, and it soon bid adieu to more than 30,000 employees nationwide. And indeed, a congressional investigation determined that the loan shouldn’t have been made in the first place. Absent that infusion, might Yellow’s leadership team made other decisions absent that could have kept he company going? We’ll never know …

Ingram’s Team Greatly Appreciates Our Advertisers We could not produce this or any publication without your support THANK YOU!

AlphaPointe Bank of America Bernstein-Rein Blish-Mize Block Real Estate Services

McCownGordon Meara Welch Browne, PC Meierotto Jewelers Midway Ford Minsky’s Netsmart Technologies Newmark Zimmer Pebble Bay Club Grill and Suites Polsinelli Russell Stover Saint Luke’s Security Benefit

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City Bright Futures Fund/Missouri Scholars Brinkmann Constructors Burns & McDonnell Collision Leaders Commerce Bank Country Club Bank Creative Planning CrossFirst Bank Ferrellgas Foley Industries Hallmark HCA Midwest Health Higgins Brothers Surgicenter for Hope Honeywell/KCNSC Husch Blackwell Inland Truck Parts & Service JE Dunn Construction Kansas City BPU Kansas City University Mark One Electric Mazuma Credit Union

Shook Hardy & Bacon Sweeney Properties Tension Corp. Terracon TGS The Barstow School TriCentury Bank UMB Bank UMKC University Health University of Kansas Westlake Hardware

102

I ng r am ’ s

May 2024

Ingrams.com