Ingrams September 2023

Wesley Fields OFFICE MANAGING PARTNER, BRYAN CAVE LEIGHTON PAISNER Running the office for one of Kansas City’s biggest law firms is one thing. It’s another to man the wheel and still engage with matters of public finance, corporate transactions and general business issues. Wesley Fields draws on nearly 20 years of experience to juggle those duties, which include negotiating and document prep for joint ventures, merg ers, consolidations, acquisitions and sales of assets. BCLP is one of the 10 largest firms in the region, based on numbers of lawyers on staff (63).

Dave Flickinger PRESIDENT, KIEWIT POWER GROUP

A lot has changed in power engineering since Dave Flickinger picked up his degree from Penn State 30 years ago. Not much of that change has come at the pace he’s living through today. “For Kiewit, clean energy is not a niche market—it’s a significant part of our business and a big part of the future of power and energy development and delivery,” he told Engineering News-Record . Over the past year, the company expected revenue in renewable power to exceed that of fossil fuels.”

COLLEGE: B.S., Political Science and African-American Studies, Yale University; J.D., Univ. of Virginia THE $5 BILLION MAN: He’s had a seat at the table in more than 100 business development and public infrastructure projects in the region, with an aggregate value topping $5 billion. HE’S ALL BUSINESS: Fields’ breadth of experience in general business representation and counsel ing includes negotiating agreements involving shareholders, employment and consulting, non-com petition and non-solicitation cases, stock-option plans, and other matters. OUTSIDE THE OFFICE: He’s been lead counsel for the city’s Tax Increment Financing Commission for 15 years, and has an impressive history of civic and non-profit engagement, including service on be half of the local board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Harvesters, the Community Food Network, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and Friends of the Zoo. HONORS: Fields was in the 40 Under Forty Class of 2000—and he was Young Lawyer of the Year in 2006.

2022 REVENUES: $2.28 billion COLLEGE: B.S., Civil Engineering, Pennsylvania State University

KIEWIT IN KC: The parent company, based in Omaha, is one of the nation’s biggest infrastructure de signers and builders, with annual revenues of $11.2 billion. A not-insignificant chunk of that was gen erated by Flickinger’s Lenexa-based division specializing in power generation and delivery systems. ALL ABOUT ENERGY: In addition to renewable energy and power delivery, Flickinger’s division spe cializes in energy storage, gas/hydrogen generation, nuclear power and retrofitting of coal-fired plants. GROWTH KINGS: Since relocating its headquarters to City Center Lenexa, Kiewit has become an em ployment anchor for that city’s built-from-scratch Downtown. It recently introduced plans for a $120 million project that would include a fourth office building on the campus, housing 800 employees, covering nearly 178,000 square feet and opening in 2025.

Michael Frazier PRESIDENT/CEO, REECENICHOLS

Cameron Garrison MANAGING PARTNER, LATHROP GPM

A year ago, in the face of cratering demand in home sales, Mike Frazier said it would be important for his army of affiliated agents to get back to fundamentals, having ridden the crest of a free-for all market when mortgage interest rates were 3 percent—and lower. Was he ever right: Sales for the region’s No. 1 realty brand dropped $1.5 billion from 2021’s $6.7 billion. Helping to cushion that blow was a sharp bump in average sales prices.

Garrison pulls double-duty at one of KC’s biggest law firms, and its old est. As managing partner, he leads a team of roughly 200 lawyers, more than a third of whom earned Best Lawyers in America honors (eight of them as Lawyer of the Year in their practice groups). He’s also a legal gladiator in intellectual-property litigation, serving a national client base of consumer-product manufacturers, retail chains, marketing and media clients, engineering firms, life sciences companies, and others.

2022 SALES: $5.2 billion COLLEGE: B.A., William Jewell College

2022 REVENUES: $198.04 million COLLEGE: B.A., Government and History, University of Virginia; J.D., Washington and Lee School of Law RECOGNITION: What we said about double-duty? Missouri Lawyers Media sees it that way, as well; it named Garrison one of its Top Managing Partners for 2023. The award goes to the “best-known and hardest working” managing partners of law firms in the state. CHANGE AGENT: When that day comes, Garrison will be able to look back and say he left the firm bigger than it was when he started. He had an instrumental role in Lathrop Gage’s 2020 merger with Gray Plant Mooty, which created today’s Lathrop GPM. STEERING THE SHIP: Garrison leads day-to-day functions and is chairman of the firm’s Executive Committee, which determines and implements the firm’s strategic direction. THE FIRM: The firm has 12 offices nationwide, with 325 attorneys, nearly one-third are based in KC.

HANGING TOUGH: Despite a more challenging environment, ReeceNichols has seen its numbers of registered agents holding steady at just over 2,200, a range it settled on after a 10 percent decline between 2015 and 2016. PRIZE CLIENT: One of the more notable ReeceNichols listings over the past year was the ranch-style house at 57th Street and State Line. The previous sellers, a couple by the last name of Mahomes, sold it in June for a reported $2.97 million (about $900,000 higher than its 2019 purchase price). MIXED SIGNALS: Frazier and his team are living through a rare period in the housing cycle: Demand has fallen sharply, with transactions for the firm down 58 percent since their 2016 peak, while home prices rose by a nearly inverse rate, 55.44 percent over that same period. Cost/demand dynamics have entered the Twilight Zone.

Brent Giles CEO, HAWTHORN BANK

Marc Hahn PRESIDENT/CEO, KANSAS CITY UNIVERSITY

Brent Giles anticipates that a highly competitive banking market in the Kansas City region is poised for consolidation. When it comes, you can expect that Hawthorn Bank will have the critical mass need ed to make acquisitions, thanks to its parent’s $1.5 billion in assets overall—$365 million are attached to Kansas City area banks that he leads. Smaller banks may be in good overall health, he says, but are imperiled by a business model that’s broken.

The big development this past year at one of Kansas City’s three med ical colleges, says Marc Hahn, was the “opening of the new College of Dental Medicine on our Joplin campus. Our Joplin, Missouri, campus is focused on addressing rural health disparities in both medicine and dentistry. This strategic initiative builds upon our university mission of: “Improving the well-being of the communities we serve.”

2022 REVENUES: $82.3 million COLLEGE: B.S., Finance, MBA, University of Missouri

COLLEGE: B.S., Syracuse University; D.O., Des Moines University DENTAL MATTERS: “We know poor oral health leads to poor overall health, with worsening of illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease,” Hahn says. “Large numbers of people do not have access to dental care in rural and urban parts of our region—Missouri having a shortage of 700 dentists!” BIG THING: Preparation for being one of the North American host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup Soc cer Tournament. Yes, we have an opportunity to show off our city, state, and region, but more importantly, we have an opportunity to invest in the future of the KC area. Building projects to support teams and fans, combined with enhanced public transportation, could leave us with great resources upon which to build. MORNING READ: “ Axios , a balanced, online American news Web site that offers concise, matter of-fact reporting in a short, bulleted format. I also read the email reports from the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Chronicle of Higher Education and Becker’s Hospital Review .

ON KC’S APPEAL: “KC is a very attractive place when looking at where to expand if you’re a smaller bank, community, or regional. A great city, a stable economy without huge ups and downs, great standard of living, attractive cost of living, plenty of things to do, growth in population, good income levels, and transportation at the intersection of two major highways.” MARGINS: Even though 80 of the region’s 120 banks have less than 1 percent deposit market share, that can be a difference-maker, Giles says. “Getting a 1 percent market share can move the needle for some of these organizations,” he says. “It’s still significant to them, and there’s enough business to go around.” ABOUT HAWTHORN: The parent company, Hawthorn Bancshares, is headquartered in Jefferson City. It has 21 locations company-wide, six of them in the KC market, including Lee’s Summit, Liberty, Independence Belton, Drexel, and Harrisonville.

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I n g r am ’ s

September 2023

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