Thirty-three Illinois companies made the 2014 Fortune 500 list, Fortune magazine’s annual ranking of the top 500 corporations by gross revenue after adjustments and excise taxes.
The figure is up from 32 companies that landed on the 2013 list and includes four Illinois companies that made their debut in 2014:
Rosemont-based US Foods, one of the nation’s largest food distributors, made its first appearance at No. 133. Its first year on the list may be its last, however, because the company was bought by competitor Sysco Corp. in December. Sysco intends to keep its corporate headquarters in Texas.
AbbVie Inc., the publicly traded North Chicago pharmaceutical concern that spun off from Abbott Laboratories in Jan. 2013, debuted at No. 152 with revenue of $18.8 billion.
Chicago-based Integrys Energy Group Inc. landed at No. 450 after boosting its annual revenue by 33.5 percent to $5.6 billion. The company, a natural gas and electricity services provider, has about 720,000 household and small business customers in Chicago.
LKQ Corporation Inc., a Chicago-based auto parts supplier, made its first appearance on the list at No. 490 after growing its revenue by 22.8 percent to about $5 billion.
Three Illinois companies dropped from the list:
OfficeMax Inc., the Naperville office-supply chain that was acquired by Office Depot Inc. last year;
Hillshire Brands Co., the Chicago-based meat company where revenue fell by 57 percent to $4 billion in 2013 after it split off its international beverage business and re-named itself from Sara Lee; and
Telephone & Data Systems, the Chicago-based parent of U.S. Cellular, where revenue declined 8.3 percent to $4.9 billion, in part because of a late 2012 sale of certain cellular markets to Sprint Nextel Corp.
The top three companies in the state, ADM (No. 27) , Boeing (No. 30) and Walgreen (No. 37), each held their positions from 2013.
Nationally, retail giant Walmart Inc. kept its spot at the top of the list while Apple edged into the top 5 this year. Oil giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron kept their top-5 spots.
The Forbes 500 list, started in 1955, ranks companies by total revenue as a measure of their size and influence.
pfrost@tribune.com
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