Ingram's May 2024

KANSAS CITY SOUTHERN/CPKC Year Founded: 1887 Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo. Sector: Transportation Number of Employees: 20,000

LOCKTON Year Founded: 1966 Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo. Sector: Insurance Number of Employees: 10,750

It took him a decade to go from startup of a suburban rail line to a regional system connecting Kansas City to commercial lanes in the Gulf of Mexico, but Arthur Stillwell was onto something big when he founded the predecessor to Kansas City Southern Railway in 1887. In the century-plus that followed, it grew to become one of the nation’s few Class I railroads, albeit the smallest, but its impact extended well beyond this region when it acquired track south of the border and formed Kansas City Southern de Mexico, further extending the Midwest’s rail reach to ports on the Pacific Ocean. KC Southern has also long been a champion of commerce here; one of its spinoff divisions became DST Systems, at one time a corporate giant in its own right. In 2021, the rail line reached a deal to merge into Canadian Pacific Railway. That created Canadian Pacific Kansas City, billed as the first and only single-line rail network connecting an entire continent.

No roster of startup-to-global home-grown brands would be complete without Lockton, the Kansas City-based insurance brokerage and benefits consultancy with offices around the world. That’s a long way from the bedroom set-up Jack Lockton configured in 1966 to start the corporate journey on his own. Remarkably enough, in the nearly 60 years that followed, corporate revenues have gone up every single year . That’s an achievement few companies, in any business sector, can claim as their own. The company’s leadership passed from its founder, who died in 2004, to his brother, David, who turned over the reins to the founder’s son in 2017. After several years in the role of chairman, Ron Lockton resumed that day-to-day oversight as CEO earlier this year. Resisting acquisition overtures along the way, Lockton has grown to become the world’s largest privately owned independent brokerage—and 10th-largest overall. It has roughly 1,600 employees in the Kansas City region, and nearly 11,000 associates working in 140 nations on every continent.

MARINER WEALTH ADVISORS Year Founded: 2006 Headquarters: Overland Park, Kan.

MERCANTILE BANK Year Founded: 1850 Headquarters: St. Louis, Mo.

Sector: Financial Services Number of Employees: 1,500

Sector: Banking & Financial Services Number of Employees: 11,000 (peak)

Marty Bicknell was able to observe wealth-management from the perspective of a high net worth family as he was growing up: His father, Gene, founded a Pittsburg, Kan.-based company that went on to become the world’s largest Pizza Hut franchisee. But the younger Bicknell has made an even bigger name for himself with this wealth-management firm, which he founded in 2006 after honing his skills with A.G. Edwards. Today, Mariner Wealth Advisors has more than $81 billion in assets under management, with more than 24,000 clients around the world. And more than half of those are high-net-worth investors; they account for two-thirds of the AUM on hand, and an average of more than $4 million each. More than just portfolio managers, his advisory team directs investments, taxes, estate planning, trusts and insurance needs for clients. And at a high level: Since 2016, Barron’s has recognized Mariner nearly every year as one of the nation’s five best wealth managers.

Officials at the once-prominent Mercantile Bank of St. Louis had barely polished their claim to being Missouri’s largest (not long after the Boatmen’s Bank acquisition in 1996) when they, too, were unable to resist the buyout bug of the late 1990s. Its $36 billion in assets at the time of acquisition would come to nearly $75 billion today, inflation-adjusted. Chartered in 1850, Mercantile attained massive scale with an acquisition spree that began not long after it celebrated its 140th birthday. In 1991, the dominoes across Missouri began to fall, and over the next five years, it snapped up banks in St. Joseph, Saint Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, Sikeston, and Chesterfield. That run also included buyout of the storied Mark Twain Bank parent. By the time that spending spree was over, the Mercantile footprint covered Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Arkansas and Iowa, and eventually, Kentucky. In May 1999, the hunter became the prey in a $10.6 billion stock sale to Firstar Bank, which then became U.S. Bank.

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May 2024

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