Analysis: Some La.-based Companies Growing Rapidly

ALAN SAYRE

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Despite the complexities of the nation's worst economic downturn in decades, some Louisiana-based companies are showing surprising growth.

The state recently has seen its count of homegrown Fortune 500 companies sprout to three: power provider Entergy Corp., engineering-construction company The Shaw Group Inc. and CenturyLink, the former CenturyTel Inc. that joined the list last summer with a canary-swallowing-the cat buyout of Embarq Corp.

Though it hasn't reached the Fortune list, Iberiabank Corp., largely limited to Louisiana in recent years, has stirred waves with takeovers of failed banks in Florida and Alabama, enlarging its footprint to six Southern states.

Modest by business expectations of many other states, the growth of these companies is still welcome news that contrasts to the earlier exodus of Louisiana-headquartered big businesses or their disappearance into the black hole of mergers. Among the lost: banker First Commerce Corp., petroleum explorer Louisiana Land & Exploration Co., mining giant Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. and offshore fabricator McDermott International Inc.

Monroe-based CenturyTel paid $5.8 billion in stock and took on $5.8 billion in debt to nab the larger Embarq and, overnight, become the nation's fourth-largest standard telecommunications provider. Baton Rouge-based Shaw, not long ago a pipe fabrication outfit, has expanded its swath to nuclear energy, defense contracts, power plant construction and post-disaster construction and engineering.