The top five companies on Business Report’s annual ranking of the Capital Region’s largest private companies by revenue are unchanged this year, but a newcomer to the list—Brown & Root Industrial Services—powered its way up to No. 6.
Brown & Root posted revenue of $625 million in 2015, which placed it just behind Associated Grocers ($695 million), MMR Group ($705 million), Performance Contractors ($1.53 billion), Turner Industries Group ($2.97 billion) and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana ($3.31 billion) on the 2016 Top 100 list.
The Brown & Root name was revived in 2015 as one of four portfolio companies of private equity firm Bernhard Capital Partners. Brown & Root was one of the biggest industrial construction firms along the Gulf Coast in the middle years of the 20th century, but its name had been idle for about the past 15 years until BCP acquired the rights to the name through a number of acquisitions and mergers and relaunched the company.
“They were the big developer of infrastructure in Louisiana, period,” BCP founder and partner Jim Bernhard told Business Report in a recent cover package about his decision to revive the company. “I knew when you walked into a plant and said, ‘I’m Brown and Root,’ they’d say, ‘Sit down.’”
Brown & Root is one of six companies new to the Top 100 list this year. Others include Dupré Logistics (No. 29), Westgate (No. 95), CMA Technology Solutions (No. 96), Specialty Welding and Turnarounds (No. 97) and Gardner Realtors (No. 100).
Collectively, the Top 100 companies posted revenue of $23.7 billion in 2015, an increase of 9.8% from combined revenue of $21.6 billion in 2014 for companies on last year’s list. The companies report employing some 78,195 people in total, and 50,354 in the Capital Region alone—accounting for 12.5% of the area’s total workforce, according to the Louisiana Workforce Commission.
See the complete 2016 Top 100 list, and pick up a copy of the new Top 100 issue on newsstands now for complete coverage. Send your comments to editors@businessreport.com.
