Fortune, June 16, 2014 (I)

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Fortune Magazine has a new website (Fortune.com, rather than sharing with the CNN)--and Surprise! allows nonscribers to read it online. But there is nothing important in this issue, whose cover story is the release of this year’s Fortune 500 (for US-- not the global--companies).

(1) Shawn Tully, The 50-State Shuffle. In a single generation the Fortune 500’s center of gravity has utterly shifted. So which states have the advantage today? Here a geography of wins and losses.
fortune.com/2014/06/02/fortune-500-shuffle/

(a) View the graphic only.

(b) Excerpts in two windows of print:
(i) Of California’s 54 Fortune 500 companies, 39 weren’t even on the list two decades ago. Among the newcomers” 20 tech and biotech heavyweights.
(ii) New York has lost 16 financial and insurance companies [AIG?] that were on the Fortune 500 a generation ago. The financial crisis claimed three of them.

(c) Quote:

(i) “Call it our Diamond Anniversary. This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 60th running of the list that debuted in 1955, amid the prosperity of the Eisenhower years.

(ii) “Among the biggest service companies not even on the 1995 roster are Amazon.com (2014 ranking: No. 35), Comcast (No. 44), Google (No. 46), and DirecTV (No. 98). The health care revolution likewise elevated a host of new leaders. The five health care providers and retailers that now reside in the top 25 were either far down the list in 1995 — CVS Caremark (No. 12 today, was ranked No. 93 two decades ago), UnitedHealth Group (went from 303 to 14), McKesson (78 to 15), and Cardinal Health (203 to 22) — or didn’t make it at all: Witness Express Scripts (No. 20).

(iii) “Those in declining industries suffered from bankruptcies, revenue falloffs, and divestitures, as formerly big names split into smaller units. Of course, many of the companies in the hard-hit states were, and remain, in strong industries. But a disproportionate share of those companies either moved or got purchased by stronger competitors in other states.

“A notable exception to the ‘right place’ trend is California. Criticized by some as a hostile, high-cost environment for business, California has shown a remarkable knack for coming out ahead in the race for large companies. The Golden State’s strength, it would seem, is reinvention: lowering its profile in manufacturing and financial services and strengthening its footprint in technology. No fewer than 31 of the 51 California companies on the Fortune 500 in 1995 are absent from the 2014 list. Three large defense contractors moved to other states: Lockheed Martin to Maryland, Rockwell Automation to Wisconsin, and Northrop Grumman to Virginia. California also lost a host of prominent corporate residents to mergers — among them, Pacific Telesis to AT&T (Texas), PacifiCare to UnitedHealth Group (Minnesota), and BankAmerica to the renamed Bank of America (North Carolina).

“But California more than compensated for those departures by adding 39 companies that weren’t even on the 500 list two decades ago. By far the biggest lift has come from the addition of 20 technology and biotech corporations. Prominent among the newcomers are Google (46), Cisco (55), eBay (180), and Facebook (341) * * *  The biotech industry likewise grew up fast. Amgen (154) was founded in Thousand Oaks in 1980; Gilead Sciences (250) got its start in Foster City in 1987. Neither company is even in its forties.