When Fortune magazine published its first Fortune 500 list in 1955, six Toledo-area firms were on it. All six still have a presence here in some form.
Four area firms on the original list have appeared in all 50 Fortune 500 lists and are among just 71 companies in Fortune's "Hall of Fame" - an amazing feat considering that 1,877 companies have made one or more of the lists.
The four from the area are Dana Corp., Owens-Illinois Inc., Owens Corning, and Marathon Oil Corp.
O-I has never missed a Fortune 500 list even though it was taken private from 1987 to 1991 by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. O-I still had publicly traded debt and had to file documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission during those "private" years, and thus was eligible for the list.
Over the years, and after numerous acquisitions, Dana Corp. has drifted to the top among local firms (at one time it was only fourth largest). Owens Corning remains on the list despite its Chapter 11 bankruptcy, now in its fourth year.
All three of those Toledo-based firms faced takeover attempts, but all three remain headquartered in Toledo. In fact, all built glitzy new headquarters facilities here - Dana's Dorr Street facility in 1970, O-I's One SeaGate building in the early 1980s, and Owens Corning's riverfront campus in the mid-1990s.
And Marathon, once based in Findlay, was the nation's 14th largest industrial corporation when it was taken over by Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel Corp. in 1982.
But U.S. Steel (later USX Corp.) continued to operate Marathon as a separate company, and at the end of 2001 it spun off Marathon as a truly separate firm. Marathon is now based in Houston, but it still has a major operation in Findlay.
Also on that first Fortune 500 list was Toledo's Libbey-Owens Ford Co., which also made the list in later years under two other names - Trinova Corp. and Aeroquip Vickers Inc.
But L-O-F's glass operations are now part of Pilkington PLC, the British glass giant, and the Aeroquip-Vickers fluid-power operation was acquired by Eaton Corp.
The sixth area firm on the original list was Tecumseh Products Co., which was among
several area companies booted off the Fortune 500 after the business magazine changed the rules nine years ago to put more service companies in its annual rankings.
Also disappearing from the list were La-Z-Boy Inc. and Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. However, Cooper, thanks to acquisitions, eventually made its way back to the Fortune 500, in 474th spot.
The four remaining area-based Fortune 500 companies had combined sales last year of nearly $25 billion. Dana is in 193rd place, O-I in 302nd, and Owens Corning is in 350th spot.
Several area firms in the "second 500" have a shot at getting on the prestigious list in the future - including Manor Care Inc., La-Z-Boy, Tecumseh Products, and The Andersons Inc.
At one time, the Toledo area had as many as nine on the Fortune 500 (including seven in Toledo), but takeovers and mergers in the 1980s and 1990s pared the list considerably. Gone are such former Fortune 500 firms as Questor Corp., Champion Spark Plug Co., and Sheller-Globe Corp.
Holnam, Inc., a Dundee cement manufacturer, went private a decade ago. And even before "merger-mania," Toledo had lost some big companies, including, in the 1970s, the headquarters of Eltra Corp, whose top officers moved to New York.
The damage could have been worse. In 1986, Owens Corning successfully fought off a hostile takeover bid by the Wickes Co., but only after taking radical moves that included recapitalizing and taking on huge debt to reward its shareholders.
O-I was acquired by KKR in early 1987, but the glass giant was spared the fate of many another takeover target - it spun off the forest products, health care, and tableware divisions but remained largely intact by the time it went public again in 1991.
And just last year, Dana defended itself against a takeover attempt by ArvinMeritor Inc., a rival auto-parts maker in Troy, Mich.
First Published April 6, 2004, 10:21 a.m.
