These are the Fortune 500 companies that call Philadelphia home
Philadelphia region is home to 12 companies that cracked the Fortune 500 list for 2018. And then there's Vanguard, plus the big hospital systems and universities.
Comcast is changing Philadelphia's skyline and remains the corporate colossus of the city and region, but who are the other major companies that call Philadelphia home? That was the gist of a question sent in from a reader via Curious Philly – a place where readers tell us what makes them curious about their community and our journalists seek out the answers. This one was pretty straightforward: Philadelphia is a place of big business.
This list ranks the largest public companies by revenue, not employment. We decided to take a look at the companies in the greater Philadelphia area that made the list — that includes Delaware, Chester, Montgomery, and Bucks counties in Pa., Gloucester, Camden, and Burlington counties in New Jersey, and Wilmington, Del.
Three are in Philly proper: Crown Holdings, Aramark, and Comcast. Here's what we know about all of them.
480: Toll Brothers
Headquartered in Horsham, Pa., this luxury house builder chalked up a 2017 revenue of $5.8 billion.
459: Burlington Stores
Burlington is from — you guessed it — Burlington, New Jersey, and while you may only know them as a coat factory, it's a full-on apparel brand that employs 40,000 people. Burlington Stores debuted on the Fortune 500 in 2016.
457: UGI
The oil and gas company, headquartered in King of Prussia, Pa. held steady at 457 both this year and last.
451: Chemours
Chemours, a chemical company headquartered in Wilmington, Del., formed in July 2015 after splitting off from DuPont. It manufactures titanium and flouroproducts and pulled in $6.1 billion in 2017 revenues — not bad for being two years old.
358: Campbell Soup
You may remember the iconic soup can from Andy Warhol's 1960s pop art, but the Camden, N.J. company is also notable for employing 18,000 people and being on the Fortune 500 for 24 years and counting.
338: Crown Holdings
Ever wondered where the cans for Coke and Pepsi come from? Some of them trace back to Crown Holdings, right here in Philadelphia, which makes packaging for consumer products and employs 24,342 people.
268: Universal Health Services
From their headquarters in King of Prussia, Pa., the for-profit Universal Health Services operates healthcare facilities in the U.S. and the UK — 350 of them, to be exact.
205: Lincoln National
The insurance provider, located in Radnor, Pa., jumped from 207 in the 2017 ranking to 205 in 2018, due to a revenue increase of 7 percent compared to last year. And, this company is the namesake for Lincoln Financial Field itself, home of our very own Philadelphia Eagles.
200: Aramark
From its corporate office on Market Street in Philadelphia, this food service company handles uniforms, staffing, and food and food service for universities, prisons, companies, and schools around the county, employing 215,000 people in the process.
47: DowDuPont
The consolidated headquarters of DowDuPont are in Michigan, but we in the Philadelphia area still claim the DuPont-Wilmington side as our own. Dow Chemical and DuPont merged on August 31, 2017, racking up 2017 revenues of $62 billion.
33: Comcast
You've probably seen downtown Philadelphia-based telecommunications giant Comcast in the news recently over its competing bid with Disney for Fox's assets. Comcast is one of the biggest employers in Philadelphia, and its impact on the skyline is undeniable. It's been on the Fortune 500 for the past 23 years.
12: AmerisourceBergen
The drug distributing giant in Chesterbrook, Pa. brought in 2017 revenues of $153.1 billion. But it's been plagued with lawsuits over the opioid epidemic, for which many experts blame drug makers and wholesalers. And it's taken a profit hit — down 74.5 percent.
But that’s not all…
But the Fortune 500 only looks at publicly traded companies. But private companies are here too: notable private companies in the area include the Vanguard Group, an investment adviser based in Malvern, Pa. that is credited with low-cost index funds and other consumer-friendly products. They manage over $5.1 trillion in assets and are the top employer in Chester County.
And from an employment standpoint, though they're not typically corporations, "Eds and Meds" — hospitals and universities — are important too. The PA Department of Industry and Labor puts out a quarterly report on the biggest employers in each county, and Philadelphia's top employer is…Penn.
Now, that's not just Penn the university; it also includes the affiliated hospital system. Coming in second is the city government, followed by federal. Even though they're not your traditional for-profit corporations, they drive a lot of the city's economy and employment.