Kansas City’s 50 Most Impactful Companies

AMC Entertainment  
Year Founded: 1920
Headquarters: Leawood, Kan.
Sector: Entertainment
Number of Employees: 33,812
The Dubinsky brothers—Maurice, Edward and Barney—were traveling tent-show performers who tired of the road and bought a fixed-up theater in Kansas City in 1920. By 1961, Ed’s son, Stan Durwood, was running the shows and applying business sense and innovation to improve the movie experience and the theater operations for a rebranded American Multi-Cinema, including the first multi-screen theater format. Durwood also leveraged his prominent business role to push for a revival of Downtown Kansas City, where the company was headquartered until 2013. The line of succession saw Peter Brown as the first person from outside the family to serve as CEO, followed by Gerardo Lopez and, since 2016, Adam Aron. From private ownership to a public company in 2013, Leawood-based AMC Entertainment has grown to become the world’s largest theatrical exhibitor, with $4.81 billion in 2023.

American Century Investments  
Year Founded: 1958
Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo.
Sector: Financial Services
Number of Employees: 1,400
From its founding by James Stowers Jr. in 1958 as Twentieth Century Investments—and rebranded as the 21st century approached—American Century Investments has established a global footprint in wealth management, currently with more than $232 billion in assets under management. Stowers helmed the enterprise for four decades before Bill Lyons became CEO in 2000, and he in turn was succeeded by Jonathan Thomas in 2007. Their efforts have helped American Century make an impact  with nine offices worldwide. On a local level, the firm continues annual funding of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, holding a controlling interest in the biomedical research firm. As such, roughly 40 percent of each year’s profits (more than $2 billion since 2000) go to the favored cause of the late founder and his wife, Virginia, both of whom had been cancer survivors.

Ash Grove Cement
Year Founded: 1882
Headquarters: Overland Park, Kan.
Sector: Construction Materials
Number of Employees: Appx. 2,000
Overland Park-based Ash Grove has been a pioneer in the portland cement industry for more than 140 years. The company, currently led by President Serge Schmidt, produces that specialized variety of cement and other materials used in the construction of highways and homes, bridges, commercial buildings, industrial sites, and other pillars of the nation’s economy. With revenues estimated to be north of $750 million, Ash Grove produces materials at 12 cement plants and 41 terminals in the U.S. and Canada. For nearly 90 years and over four generations, Ash Grove was controlled by the Sunderland family, culminating with the 2018 sale to CRH, a company based in Dublin. That $3.5 billion sale prompted a nearly unprecedented infusion of philanthropic muscle into the Sunderland Foundation, where brothers Charlie and Kent Sunderland continue to impact this region today.

Associated Wholesale Grocers
Year Founded: 1924
Headquarters: Kansas City, Kan.
Sector: Grocery Distribution
Number of Employees: 4,600
If you eat, this is a company that matters to you: Associated Wholesale Grocers bills itself as the nation’s largest cooperative food wholesaler to independently owned supermarkets, and that means feeding a lot of mouths. It serves roughly 1,100 member companies that, combined, have more than 3,300 grocery locations in 33 states. Those operations generated more than $12.4 billion in revenues in 2023, making AWG the third-largest private enterprise in this region. Groceries are the mainstay, but the company also delivers health and beauty care, general merchandise, pharmaceutical products, specialty foods, natural and organic products, and has various subsidiaries that provide real-estate and supermarket development services. Over the past 25 years, the company has been led at various times by Mike DeFabis, Doug Carolan, Gary Phillips, Jerry Garland, David Smith and, since last year, Dan Funk.

Lansing Trade Group/The Andersons 
Year Founded: 1940
Headquarters: Maumee, Ohio (Overland Park office)
Sector: Agribusiness
Number of Employees: 2,334
In the heart of America’s Farm Belt, Lansing Trade Group could trace its roots back to 1931—but that particular Lansing wasn’t in grain-glutted Kansas; it was founded in Michigan. From Lansing Grain Co. to its LTG iteration and relocation to the Kansas City area, it grew to become one of the nation’s most influential agribusiness interests, with holdings in grain storage, trading, energy and other fields. It also was, at its peak, one of the five largest private companies in the Kansas City region. It still has the distinction of being a national power, but under new ownership: The Andersons, an Ohio-based giant that first acquired a share of LTG ownership in 2003, kicked in $305 million to secure the balance in 2019. The firm retained its Overland Park office, which continues to manage trading functions under the leadership of Bill Krueger, who was CEO before the sale went through. 

Bartlett & Co.  
Year Founded: 1907
Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo./Midvale, Utah
Sector: Agribusiness
Number of Employees: Appx. 300
Ideally located in the buckle of America’s Grain Belt, Bartlett & Co. became an agribusiness giant in the decades following its founding in 1907, mastering the arts of grain merchandising and storage, flour and feed milling, and cattle feeding. At one point, it was among the five largest private companies in the Kansas City region before it sold for an undisclosed sum to Utah-based Savage Co. in 2018. The corporate parentage may be remote, but the brand is still tethered to this region with the grain division’s headquarters near the Country Club Plaza. Its reach extends across the continent, with 16 grain facilities in the U.S., three in Mexico, and milling operations in Kansas and North Carolina. Paul Bartlett, an original owner of the company, passed the reins to Paul Jr., who kept the family control going when he passed the baton to James Hebenstreit. Bob Knief, a 20-year veteran, currently oversees Bartlett’s agriculture-sector operations for Savage.

Black & Veatch
Year Founded: 1915
Headquarters: Overland Park, Kan.
Sector: Engineering/Design
Number of Employees: 12,489
One of the two pillars of global engineering services that help define this region as a national center of excellence in engineering/design/build, this Overland Park company began building its legacy when Ernest Bateman Black and Nathan Thomas Veatch set up shop. Fast-forward nearly 110 years, and you have a powerhouse delivering energy, telecom and water systems in more than 100 countries. B&V announced in 2020 that it would exit that line of design/build, but it remains a formidable player in energy infrastructure with its work on transmission lines, low-carbon generation and exploration of hydrogen as a fuel source. The firm has been employee-owned since 1999, a year after Len Rodman became its first CEO in a reorganization from a managing-partner structure. He was succeeded by another long-timer B&V veteran, Steven Edwards, in 2013, and Mario Azar took the helm last summer.

Block Real Estate Services
Year Founded: 2009
Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo.
Sector: Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
Number of Employees: 372
The name Block—no, not the tax guys—has been synonymous with commercial real estate sales, leasing and development in the Kansas City region, and now nationwide, since brothers Allen and Jim Block hung up a shingle in 1946. In 2009, Allen’s sons Ken, Stephen and Michael formed this company as a new venture, BRES, and it has since staked a claim to being the most influential commercial-realty concern in the region, both in scale and reach. For one, it manages more than 45 million square feet of office and industrial property across its operations. On the residential side, it owns or has developed apartment complexes with more than 10,600 units. Far beyond brokering sales and lease transactions, the firm also specializes in construction, development, property management, asset management, property maintenance services and even real-estate investments.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas
Year Founded: 1942
Headquarters: Topeka, Kan.
Sector: Insurance
Number of Employees: 1,757
In all but two counties in the Sunflower State, the first name in health insurance is Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Topeka. With more than 925,000 Kansans covered, this non-profit is the largest insurer in the state, offering plans for individuals, employers and services for health-care providers. “We were started by providers in 1942,” says Matt All, the current president and CEO. “Providers who wanted to develop a health-care system where members could focus on getting the care they need without going bankrupt.” Reflective of the changes in health-care delivery in more than 80 years since its inception, BCBSKS covers not just hands-on provider care, but dental services, prescription drugs, mental health and wellness-management services that behavioral health, disease management, workplace wellness, telehealth and other services, and offers disability and travel-insurance plans, as well as traditional Medicare coverage.

Blue KC
Year Founded: 1938
Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo.
Sector: Insurance
Number of Employees: 1,531
The roots go back to 1938, but the company we know today as Blue KC was formed in 1983 with the union of Blue Cross of Kansas City and the separate entity formed in 1943, Blue Shield of Kansas City. That set the stage for a health-insurance heavyweight—the not-for-profit Blue KC easily outranks all other challengers, including the biggest for-profit companies, in the number of clients served and revenues in the Kansas City market. Yes, it’s a major player in a vital business sector, but its influence goes well beyond being a major employer (a staff of more than 1,530); it’s also a vital presence in the Downtown business district, having recently leased headquarters space in the new, 18-story 1400KC tower. The history of its corporate leadership includes Tom Bowser, David Gentile, Danette Wilson (the first woman to hold the role of president and CEO) and, since 2019, Erin Stucky.

Bank of America
Year Founded: 1847 Boatmen’s Bank/1886 First National Bank of Kansas City
Headquarters: St. Louis/Kansas City
Sector: Financial Services
Number of Employees: 212,000
Since its predecessor banks first opened doors over 200 years ago, many banks have merged to become Bank of America as it is known today. At its zenith, St. Louis-based Boatmen’s Bank wasn’t just the biggest bank in Missouri, it was the 30th largest in the nation. Its acquisition of First National Bank of Kansas City in 1985 had given it a foothold on the western side of the state. So, it was a very big deal when Charlotte-based NationsBank came calling in 1996 with a $9.5 billion buyout. Continuing westward, NationsBank in 1998 acquired California-based Bank of America, ultimately taking the name for the combined company. Today Bank of America is one of the world’s leading financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small and middle-market businesses, and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products and services. Throughout its history, the bank has worked to provide the resources that have helped make financial opportunity a reality for all. It has remained exceedingly local supporting impactful sponsorships and providing charitable funding that helps make Kansas City a great place to live and work.

Burns & McDonnell  
Year Founded: 1898
Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo.
Sector: Engineering/Design/Build
Number of Employees: 15,900
Even after 125 years, Kansas City’s biggest engineering/construction/design firm is still mighty spry: It has more than doubled staffing levels in the past six years and now boasts 5,000 employees in the Kansas City area. Last year it produced record revenues of $7.4 billion for a company that is also a model corporate citizen in markets across a global footprint. It’s a model employer, as well: 100 percent employee-owned. Burns & Mac is a full-service engineering firm specializing in infrastructure at every level: aviation, industrial, data centers, power, telecom, transportation, water, and now an emerging power in business analytics and consulting. One of the most significant developments in firm history came when CEO Dave Ruf led the effort with board members to buy the firm from Armco Steel, then charted a course for the ESOP. He’s been succeeded by a high-power lineup of Greg Graves, Ray Kowalik and since January of this year, Leslie Duke, the first woman in the CEO’s chair.

Cerner Corp. 
Year Founded: 1979
Headquarters: North Kansas City, Mo.
Sector: Health-Care IT
Number of Employees: 25,000 (peak)
Cerner Corp. went public in 1986, seven years after it was founded, and up until its acquisition by Oracle Corp., this health-informatics giant was THE defining example of Kansas City’s entrepreneurial spirit for four decades. Neal Patterson, Cliff Illig and Paul Gorup seized the opportunity to help the nation’s health-care system go digital, launching with a single product that blossomed into a suite of health informatics and population-health technologies. Gorup retired in 2015, a year before Patterson’s death; Illig left the Cerner board three years later. They created a company that would surpass $5 billion in revenue and, at one point, stood as the region’s largest private employer (roughly 15,000 here and 25,000 globally) before the sale to Oracle was finalized in 2022. The new parent gave off an ominous signal for the role the firm will play here when founder Larry Ellison announced last month it would move its Austin headquarters to Nashville.

Children’s Mercy Kansas City
Year Founded: 1897
Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo.
Sector: Healthcare
Number of Employees: 7,443
An emerging force in pediatric health-care research, Children’s Mercy has outgrown its KC-centric mission with a physical footprint that covers the two-state region, and a reputation that’s national in scope. More than half a million young patients are treated in its facilities every year, and of those more than 14,000 are admitted as patients. That’s a long way from 1897, when Alice Berry Graham and her sister, Katharine Berry Richardson, began treating a single young girl. By 1927, the hospital had already made its mark (Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig paid a visit to patients that year), and celebrity support continues today with the annual Big Slick fund-raising event. In 2021, it opened a $200 million tower devoted to pediatric drug research, extending its reach in that field. Before long, new leadership will be in place. Six years after taking the reins from longtime leader Rand O’Donnell, Paul Kempinski recently announced his upcoming retirement.

Commerce Bank
Year Founded: 1865
Headquarters: Kansas City-St. Louis
Sector: Banking/Financial Services
Number of Employees: 4,722
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s digital records go back to 1992, but 34 years is little more than the blink of an eye in the history of one of the Midwest’s oldest banks. Even then, though, Commerce Bank sat largely where it does today in terms of its financial muscle—near the top. It surpassed the billion-dollar mark on assets in 1971 and needed another generation to reach $2.5 billion (about $5.5 billion today). Since then, the bank has grown nearly sixfold, surpassing $31 billion as one of the market’s premier brands and a long-established partner to countless regional businesses. Among the notable companies and projects spawned with its backing were Arthur Stillwell’s rail operation (he had already founded Kansas City Southern), Midwest Research Institute (now MRIGlobal), and Trans World Airlines’ overhaul center here. Kevin Barth is the Kansas City region chairman/CEO, with Rob Bratcher as president.

Creative Planning  
Year Founded: 1983
Headquarters: Overland Park, Kan.
Sector: Financial Services
Number of Employees: 2,100
Don’t just take our word for it: The brainiacs at the wealth-management bible Barron’s, have designated Overland Park’s Creative Planning as one of the nation’s best wealth-management firms every year for nearly a decade, with multiple No. 1 rankings. On its way to $300 billion in assets under management or advisement, this once-upon-a-time boutique investment adviser morphed into a market disruptor after Peter Mallouk acquired it in 2006 and turned it into a one-stop shopping mall of investment guidance, risk management, tax, estate planning and legal services. Along the way, that explosive growth generated explosive returns for the firm and more than 234,000 clients around the world, its employees, and Mallouk (along with his wife, Veronica) into major donors in philanthropic circles. The biggest leap in scale came with the 2021 acquisition of Lockton’s $110 billion retirement services unit.

C2FO
Year Founded: 2008
Headquarters: Leawood, Kan.
Sector: Financial Technology
Number of Employees: 600
C2FO exploded onto the local, national and global scenes almost simultaneously with its visionary take on financial-tech services. The Leawood company, founded in 2008 by banking-family scion Sandy Kemper, C2FO has developed a platform that allows quicker business access to accounts receivable funds, trading a small piece of the anticipated receipts for immediate delivery. Inspired by his own cash-flow challenges as an entrepreneur, Kemper has built an organization with stunning metrics: roughly 50 million approved invoices are approved daily for more than 2 million in-network businesses across the globe. That pencils out to more than $333 billion in funding since launch, yielding more than $1.3 billion in EBITDA for enterprise buyer customers and $2.2 billion in estimated new earnings for C2FO’s supplier customers.

Dairy Farmers of America
Year Founded: 1998
Headquarters: Kansas City, Kan.
Sector: Agribusiness/Dairy Products
Number of Employees: 18,500
A relative newcomer to any list of Kansas City’s most influential companies is Dairy Farmers of America, which took its form in 1998 when four dairy cooperatives across the country merged into one. That was the birth of what would become this region’s largest private-sector enterprise, with 2023 revenues of $21.7 billion. Though fewer than 500 are employed at the Wyandotte County headquarters, more than 18,500 people nationwide are involved in the production of milk, cheese, ice cream, and other dairy products bearing nearly more than three dozen dairy-case brands, all flowing from 11,000 family farms across the U.S. Among them are names like Borden’s, PET and TruMoo, with most being hyperlocal to various markets. Dennis Rodenbaugh is the current CEO, having assumed command after a long run by Rick Smith, one of the driving forces behind the creation of the cooperative.

DST Systems 
Year Founded: 1969
Headquarters: Formerly Kansas City, Mo.
Sector: Tech Services
Number of Employees: 13,000 (peak)
Few companies attest to the power of innovation the way DST Systems did: A tech company spawned by … a railroad company. It started as a subsidiary of Kansas City Southern, originally tasked with creating software to monitor freight shipments. The leadership quickly realized the digital potential, calving it off as a separate company incorporated in 1978. Under the leadership of CEO Tom McDonnell, it grew into a national provider of technology and advisory services for companies in health-care and financial services. Before it was acquired by SS&C Technologies in 2018 for $5.4 billion, it employed more than 13,000 people. It also was a powerful agent for change, leading the transformation of the Quality Hill neighborhood and helping set a civic agenda for business growth and the broader Downtown renewal that would follow. 

KCP&L/Great Plains-Evergy
Year Founded: 1882
Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo. 
Sector: Energy
Number of Employees: Appx. 5,000
As a technical point, Evergy is still a corporate kid, just six years old. Don’t let that obscure an organizational history that goes back more than 140 years, to when a pair of entrepreneurs wired 13 businesses in Downtown Kansas City under the brand Kawsmouth Electric Light Co. In 1922, it became Kansas City Power & Light, following a growth arc that tracked with other regional energy companies, then merging with them right up to the 2018 union of parent Great Plains Energy and Topeka-based Western Resources. Today, the powerhouse serves more than 1 million residential and commercial clients in the greater Kansas City and bi-state region, and is upgrading facilities to lower emissions while increasing the energy supply to feed ravenous appetites of data centers and large manufacturing plants. David Campbell, the current CEO, came on board in 2021.

Euronet Worldwide
Year Founded: 1994
Headquarters: Leawood, Kan.
Sector: Electronic Payment Services
Number of Employees: Appx. 8,000
This might be the biggest company many people, even in these parts, have never heard of, and there’s a reason for that. Though its headquarters are in suburban Leawood, Euronet specializes in electronic financial payments precisely where the name indicates—around the world. Capitalizing on the aftermath of communism’s collapse across Eastern Europe in the 1990s, founders Mike Brown and his brother-in-law, Dan Henry, were quick to help millions of newly unyoked consumers get their hands on cash needed to buy and sell in newly capitalistic systems. Just two years after the launch with its first ventures in Hungary, the firm made its first stock offering and, since then, has steadily climbed the list of the largest public companies in the Kansas City area. As of 2023, it stood as the sixth-largest in the region, with revenues of nearly $3.7 billion.

Farmland Foods  
Year Founded: 1966
Headquarters: Formerly Kansas City, Mo. 
Sector: Agribusiness
Number of Employees: 16,000 (peak)
The brand still stands today—you can see it in grocery meat cases across the nation—but Farmland Foods isn’t quite the local presence it was for nearly 75 years after its founding in 1929. At its zenith, it was owned by 1,700 farm cooperatives in the Northern Hemisphere—who, in turn, were owned by more than 600,000 farmer families. Farmland became a Fortune 100 company, with revenues peaking north of $11.8 billion in 2001 (about $21 billion today). The fall, however, came quickly, with the onset of a liquidity crisis just a year later, prompting a bankruptcy filing and signalling the end. Smithfield Foods, U.S. Premium Beef, Wichita-based Koch Industries, and a hedge fund ended up with the biggest pieces of the cooperative’s assets.

Garmin 
Year Founded: 1989
Headquarters: Olathe, Kan.
Sector: GPS Technology
Number of Employees: 19,900
Garmin is a crown jewel among Kansas City businesses, a mix of entrepreneurship and innovation that has exceeded even the most iconic of brands in this city’s rich history, such as Hallmark, H&R Block or Cerner. It was founded in 1998 to exploit emerging consumer demand for GPS technology scaled to consumers on the road, in the air or on the open water. As that technology has evolved and disrupted the model, Garmin has pivoted to become a dominant player in wearable tech for the outdoor and fitness markets. Though a global power, it recently reaffirmed its commitment to Kansas City as its home with a massive expansion of the Olathe headquarters, where it can now accommodate 5,000 employees among its total workforce of 19,000 scattered across 35 nations. Cliff Pemble, one of the first hires, eventually became CEO in 2013, succeeding co-founders Min Kao and the recent Gary Burrell.

H&R Block
Year Founded: 1955
Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo. 
Sector: Tax Preparation
Number of Employees: Appx. 3,000
Founded almost as a sideline business by accountants Henry and Richard Bloch in 1955, H&R Block has paid dividends for the Kansas City area as a corporate citizen in two very important ways. First, it put the region on the map as the home for an emerging financial services sector focused on helping consumers and business clients produce their tax returns and optimize their tax strategies, and it became the global name in income-tax services by doing so. It also helped salvage the vision of a renewed Downtown by committing to build a new headquarters there, and that building’s opening in 2006 helped create critical mass for the development that followed—today’s Power & Light entertainment district, along with thousands of new market-rate apartments bringing residents back to the central business district. Jeff Jones, the current CEO, took the reins in 2017.

Hallmark Cards
Year Founded: 1910
Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo.
Sector: Personal-Expression Products
Number of Employees: 20,000
From its comparatively humble start in greeting cards, Hallmark is a Kansas City institution that became the world’s leading brand in that niche. But the drag on print in the digital age has compelled the company to explore multiple business channels in the broader field now called personal expressions, including its own television network, and the concept of a birthday, get-well or anniversary card has blossomed into a much broader field known as personal expressions, including greeting-card software and video cards. But there’s more to come, as it explores instant e-cards, custom streaming music, customized postage stamps, video flip books, creative-content search engines, and more. It has helped Kansas City develop a creative class that punches well above its weight for markets this size. The company’s leadership has progressed from Joyce Hall to Don Hall Sr., Irv Hockaday, Don Jr. and now Mike Perry.

HCA Midwest Health  
Year Founded: 2003
Headquarters: Overland Park, Kan.
Sector: Health Care
Number of Employees: 9,000+
With the stroke of a pen—and the $1.3 billion behind it—the nation’s largest health-care system became a dominant player in the Kansas City region when it purchased Health Midwest in 2003. A generation later, its seven regional hospitals and medical centers account for nearly one-fifth of the region’s total beds and patient admissions—more than 60,000 of the latter each year—generating in excess of $12 billion combined. That transaction also infused the region with nearly half a billion dollars worth of philanthropic muscle directed to health-care foundations on each side of the state line—what is now the Health Forward Founda-tion in Missouri, and the REACH Foundation in Kansas. Keith Zimmerman, the current CEO, was appointed to the leadership role in 2022, succeeding long-time leader Mel LaGarde. 

Hill’s Pet Nutrition 
Year Founded: 1907
Headquarters: Overland Park, Kan.
Sector: Animal Nutrition Products
Number of Employees: 2,600
Last year, this maker of pet foods celebrated its 75th anniversary—but Leavenworth County and the city of Tonganoxie got to open the present: A new, 365,000-square-foot production plant on an 80-acre site. In tandem with the legacy production plant in Topeka, covering nearly 489,000 square feet, Hill’s Pet Nutrition further cemented its role as a key regional employer. It produces the popular Hill’s Science Diet brand, and about 100 workers at the new site will turn out nearly 170 other food varieties. Based in Topeka for much of its history, the company relocated its headquarters to the sprawling Aspiria campus in Overland Park in 2023. It continues to operate a 170-acre research and development center in the state’s capital city, as well as a production plant in Emporia, and last year it generated an estimated $4.2 billion in revenue for global parent Colgate-Palmolive.

Hunt Midwest
Year Founded: 1969
Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo. 
Sector: Real Estate/Logistics
Number of Employees: 1,500
The late, great Lamar Hunt will forever be remembered for making Kansas City a pro football town (and also for inspiring a city to become the self-proclaimed Soccer Capital of America). But his business acumen extended well beyond the teams’ front offices—and, as it turns out, well below. In 1969, his Great Midwest Corp. partnership purchased a nearly 40-year-old maker of road-construction aggregates, a move that, well, paved the way for Hunt Midwest’s impressive growth in the region’s logistics and construction sectors. Among its expansive holdings, the company operates the world’s largest underground warehousing and business complex, Subtropolis, and is flexing its muscles in above-ground logistics with KCI 29 Logistics Park, a massive, 3,300-acre development near Kansas City International Airport.

Honeywell FM&T National Security Campus 
Year Founded: 1949
Headquarters: Gaithersburg, MD/Kansas City, Mo.
Sector: Defense Contract Manufacturing
Number of Employees: 7,000+
Nearly 25 years after securing its first federal contract to produce non-nuclear components for the nation’s military arsenal, Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies continues to expand the massive footprint at the site it manages for the National Nuclear Security Administration. Since it was first awarded the work in 2000, the operation has pulled into this region billions in federal funding and attracted a highly educated work force skilled in advanced manufacturing, engineering and other disciplines. A decade ago, it opened a 900,000-square foot plant in southern Jackson County, escaping the confines of the former Ban-nister Road complex in south Kansas City. The growth continues to be impressive under President Eric Wollerman: recent hiring efforts have boosted the employee count above 7,000, making it one of the region’s biggest employers.

Hostess Brands/Interstate Bakeries  
Year Founded: 2013
Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo. 
Sector: Consumer Products
Number of Employees: 19,000 (peak)
For nearly a century of acquisitions, rebrandings, re-structuring, layoffs, fiscal peril, bankruptcy and more acquisitions, this company known throughout its history as Interstate Bakeries, Interstate Brands, Interstate Bakeries (again), and Hostess Brands has been a major player in the nation’s baking circles. At one time, it was the nation’s fifth-largest baker, and at its peak had more than 19,000 employees. The final trip through bankruptcy set the stage for recovery that started in 2013, and the maker of popular snack cakes and other products was soon on the path back to billion-dollar revenues. That performance, in a sector where consolidation is king, eventually caught the eye of the leadership of the food giant J.M Smucker’s, which last year acquired Hostess in a deal worth $5.6 billion, one of the region’s biggest acquisitions of the past decade.

JE Dunn Construction Co.
Year Founded: 1924
Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo.
Sector: Construction & Engineering
Number of Employees: 4,540
One man’s vision 100 years ago, one family’s commitment to construction-services excellence, one company’s pledge to be a model corporate citizen—all are woven into the story of JE Dunn Construction. Over the past 50 years, it has become the region’s largest hometown contractor and one of the 20 biggest in the nation. With 1,200 employees here and more than 4,500 in more than two dozen offices nationwide, JE Dunn continues to break records, as with last year’s high-water revenue mark of $6.47 billion. The company’s commitment to local philanthropy and civic engagement in all of its markets is well known, and its commitment to members of the team was demonstrated when it transitioned to an employee stock ownership model in 2010. Founder John Ernest Dunn turned the reins over to Bill Dunn, Sr., then Gen3’s Terry Dunn and Steve Dunn until 2014, when Gordon Lansford assumed the lead.

Kiewit Corp.
Year Founded: 1884
Headquarters: Lenexa, Kan.
Sector: Construction & Engineering
Number of Employees: 31,000
Even as an operating unit of the Omaha-based engineering and construction giant, Kiewit’s power division in Lenexa is massive: Nearly 1,700 people work from that office, and last year their labors yielded more than $3 billion in revenues. Over the past 30 years, the company has delivered an estimated 125,000 megawatts of power generation around the world. Some perspective: That’s roughly 104 times the annual output of the Wolf Creek nuclear generating station 90 minutes southwest of Kansas City. Kiewit designs and builds systems for power generated from renewables, hydrogen and fossil fuels, plus storage for that power, solutions for reducing carbon emissions, and transmission/distribution networks. The Lenexa-based division, led by Dave Flickinger, is now deep into the development of power sources less reliant on carbon, including solar, hydro and wind.

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

Lockton
Year Founded: 1966
Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo. 
Sector: Insurance
Number of Employees: 10,750
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. 
Sector: Financial Services
Number of Employees: 1,500
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.

Mercantile Bank
Year Founded: 1850
Headquarters: St. Louis, Mo.
Sector: Banking & Financial Services
Number of Employees: 11,000 (peak)
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.

NIC, Inc.
Year Founded: 1992
Headquarters: Overland Park, Kan. 
Sector: Government Services Provider
Number of Employees: 978 (peak)
The company was co-founded in 1992 by Harry Herington, a motorcycle-riding former law-enforcement officer who, if you ever get a chance to meet him, will help you redefine what it means to be a raconteur. The company went public and claimed its spot on the NASDAQ in 1999. Had the federal government turned to NIC for its ACA site rollout, disaster might have been avoided; the company had already demonstrated its ability to turn thousands of local and state government digital operations into efficient web platforms that could streamline those varied tasks that the American public had come to dread: property-tax registrations, on-line payments and the like. Herington’s vision is the reason that most people today can avoid the dreaded trip to the vehicle licensing office to renew their tags—now it’s a matter of a few clicks of the mouse. In 2021, NIC was acquired by Texas-based Tyler Technologies for a whopping $2.1 billion.

NPC International  
Year Founded: 1962
Headquarters: Leawood, Kan.
Sector: Food Services
Number of Employees: 36,000 (peak)
NPC International was a fast-food giant that grew from a single Pizza Hut franchise secured by Gene Bicknell, a Pittsburg, Kan., entrepreneur and one-time candidate for governor of Kansas, in 1962. Riding a franchising model that created a fraternity known as “Pizza Hut Millionaires,” who got involved early and contributed to the company’s explosion as a cultural phenomenon. In 1984, NPC went public with a stock offering, then returned to private-company status in 2001 and started adding Wendy’s sites to the portfolio in 2013. Before the end came, NPC was the world’s largest Pizza Hut franchisee, operating more than 1,200 locations in 27 states. It also was the biggest Wendy’s franchisee, with more than 380 of those stores in eight states, and was one of the Kansas City region’s largest private companies. But with little notice, the company declared bankruptcy in 2020, and California-based Flynn Restaurant Group made an offer of $816 million to acquire what was left.

NorthPoint Development 
Year Founded: 2012
Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo. 
Sector: Real Estate Development
Number of Employees: 400
The Great Recession of 2007-09 absolutely cratered the nation’s commercial real-estate sector. One project struggling to recover—without much success—was a massive logistics park in southwest Johnson County. In 2012, an enterprising Nathaniel Hagedorn, closer to his 30th birthday than his 40th, secured development rights to the site near Gardner in southwest Johnson County. The rest is Kansas City logistics history: Within three years, Hagedorn and his NorthPoint Development team had gone vertical on more than 3 million feet of industrial and warehousing space at Logistics Park Kansas City. That helped touch off an explosion of logistics growth in the region (LPKC has more than 18 million sf today), as national retailers saw a long-overdue light bulb go off over their heads. It has an industrial portfolio of more than 150 million square feet, 5,400 multifamily units developed and managed, and nearly $20 billion in assets under management.

Saint Luke’s Health System  
Year Founded: 1882
Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo.
Sector: Healthcare
Number of Employees: 10,000+
One of the region’s oldest surviving enterprises has a sparkling new organizational structure as of this year: founded in 1882 as a single hospital, Saint Luke’s Health System eventually grew to include the mother ship near the Country Club Plaza, plus satellite locations in the Northland, Lee’s Summit and Overland Park. Combined, they made it one of the region’s most active health-care providers, based on annual admissions, which last year alone topped 42,300. Last year, continuing pressures for health-care institutions to consolidate led to an agreement with BJC Healthcare of St. Louis to form a single entity that would serve Missouri’s entire population of 6.2 million. The Kansas City operation is now designated as BJC’s west region. Its four medical centers accounted for more than $8 billion in revenues last year, not including other legacy operations of Saint Luke’s, such as physician offices and clinics. Julie Quirin, who had overseen the main campus, became president of the west region.

Payless Cashways
Year Founded: 1930
Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo. 
Sector: Construction
Number of Employees: 18,000+ (peak)
Half a century before there even was a Home Depot, and long before Lowe’s broke out of its regional focus as a North Carolina hardware concern, do-it-yourselfers in the Midwest turned to Payless Cashways for one-stop-shopping with their home improvement needs. Founded in Iowa in 1930 but Kansas City-based since 1977, it was among the first larger-format stores to make DIY a thing. At its peak, it operated nearly 200 stores within a 22-state footprint, had more than 18,000 employees, and cracked the Fortune 500 lineup. Its early success came from a strategic decision to focus on cash sales rather than bear the risks inherent with selling to builders on credit—the company formed, after all, just months after the stock market crash of 1929 triggered the Great Depression. After World War II, with millions of GIs returning home and a housing boom in the works, the demand for materials skyrocketed. Finances, though, not simply emerging competitors, would eventually take it down. 

Russell Stover  
Year Founded: 1923
Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo.
Sector: Manufacturing
Number of Employees: 2,300
Russell Stover Candies traces its inception to just over a century ago, when a one-time farmer by the name of Russell William Stover made the leap to a sweeter line of work. He hit it big with development of a frozen treat that’s still around: The Eskimo Pie. Stover would later sell his interest in that enterprise in 1923, relocate to Denver and with his wife, Clara, began selling boxed chocolates made in their kitchen at home. In 1931, they chose Kansas City for a new corporate home, and eventually the confectioner was knocking out 11 million pounds of candies annually, selling through 2,000 department stores and 40 corporate locations. Stover died in 1954, his wife sold the company for $7.5 million in 1960, and it stayed in the family of the box vendor who bought it from her, Louis Ward, until 2014. That year, when sales reportedly hit $500 million, Swiss confectioner Lindt & Sprüngli acquired it from the Ward family.

Seaboard Corp.
Year Founded: 1959
Headquarters: Merriam, Kan.
Sector: Agribusiness, Transportation
Number of Employees: 23,000+ 
One might think the biggest public company in a metropolis of 2.2 million would stand out among the corporate crowd, but Seaboard Corp.’s subtle presence here—you almost have to be looking for that modest brick office building in Merriam to notice it—reflects the focus of an enterprise focus that is global, not parochial. While just a few hundred souls populate the headquarters here, the firm has more than 12,000 employees on the payroll around the world. Last year, it posted revenues of $9.52 billion, drawn from its extensive operations in various agribusiness disciplines, including hog and poultry production, maritime shipping, grain processing and commodities trading. Its shipping operations extend to the Caribbean, and Central and South America, and is milling/trading footprint hits Africa, Europe, South America and the Caribbean. Robert Steer, the current CEO, is the first to take the company’s leadership from outside the founding Bresky family.

Security Benefit 
Year Founded: 1892
Headquarters: Topeka, Kan.
Sector: Financial Services
Number of Employees: 600
From individuals planning for their retirement to businesses that provide savings tools for their employees, all the way up to administrators at school-district scale, Security Benefit is a national leader in retirement-savings tools and technology. High-net-worth investors also are part of the financial muscle that comes from more than $51.6 billion in assets under management for this Topeka-based company, which helps chart secure financial futures through a suite of services that focus on market growth, principal preservation, retirement income and estate planning. It’s been an impressive run since the company was founded in 1892, when 11 business leaders each threw $1—yes, one dollar—into a pooled insurance fund. Doug Wolff is now CEO, having taken the helm from Mike Kiley, who became CEO in 2010. Together, they directed an impressive turnaround following the financial crisis of 2008.

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

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

The University of Kansas Health System 
Year Founded: 1906
Headquarters: Kansas City, Kan.
Sector: Health Care
Number of Employees: 14,769
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.

Waddell & Reed
Year Founded: 1937
Headquarters: Overland Park, Kan. 
Sector: Financial Services
Number of Employees: 1,691 (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. 

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