Bigger Is Better for PNC, This Year's Top 50 Winner

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TUESDAY, MARCH 20, 2007 Bigger is better for PNC, this year’s top 50 winner

By Patricia Sabatini Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

If you had to sum up this year’s best performing company in three superlatives, it might be this: big profits, big reach, big heart. PNC Financial Services Group, the this year’s Top 50 Overall winner among the region’s public companies, enjoyed a banner year in 2006. The financial services giant posted a record profit of $2.6 billion, saw a 20 percent surge in its stock price and beefed up its core banking business with the $6 billion takeover of Baltimore-based Mercantile Bankshares Corp. The company also decided to share its good fortunes, not just with top executives, but with the entire work force. It doled out bonuses to the majority of the rank-and-file – $1,000 for full-timers and $500 for part-timers – all in time for Christmas. The Post-Gazette used seven performance factors to crown the winners in the Overall category: revenue, change in revenue, net income, change in net income, stock price change, market capitalization (which measures how much a company was worth based on its stock price multiplied by shares outstanding), and return on equity, which gives shareholders a gauge of a company’s vitality by showing how effectively management is using their money. That formula favors the big players over the little ones, as evidenced by the other top finishers (all with annual revenues in the billions), including U.S. Steel at No. 2, followed pump their wells, scored high marks in growth Mellon, the storied financial services by another metals company, Allegheny categories as brisk demand and higher energy titan Superior nudged out for fifth place, also Technologies, and Allegheny Energy. prices helped net income to more than triple on appears headed for the Big Apple and likely But size alone wasn’t enough to bump all revenue that nearly doubled from the previous year. won’t be back to take stock of next year. of the smaller guys from the top of the heap. Superior zoomed from the No. 20 spot in The 137-year-old Pittsburgh stalwart, With its $245 million in revenue, Superior the 2005 rankings, the year it went public. whose takeover by Bank of New York is Well Services overpowered mighty Mellon Although there’s no disputing PNC’s stellar expected to close in July, estimates 600 local Financial and its $5.3 billion in revenue to take performance, its rise to the tip-top of the list workers could lose their jobs as the merged fifth place on the overall list. also included a bit of serendipity. company cuts overlapping positions. Superior also outranked a slew of other Alcoa, the aluminum behemoth that landed Mellon Chief Executive Officer Robert bigger, more well-known players, including atop the overall winner’s circle in four of the Kelly, who will run the combined bank from H.J. Heinz (No. 7); PPG Industries (No. 8) and previous five years, was yanked from the running New York, has promised to offset job losses CNX Gas (No. 9.) this time after fessing up to what many already by adding 1,000 to 2,000 people here in coming The Indiana, Pa.-based company, which saw as obvious – that it had adopted New York years as Pittsburgh remains the home to helps independent oil and natural gas companies as its headquarters. several key business units.