St. Louis – Less Beer More Health

Here in St. Louis there has been a lot of upset people about the potential buyout of Anheuser-Busch by InBev.  Isn’t that business?  Don’t the shareholders want to maximize their return?  Of course, we have lost several big companies to international entities which obviously changes the dynamics, charity support, and other things but isn’t that part of globalization.

So, I was a little surprised (not totally) that the WSJ blog talked about St. Louis moving more toward high growth health care than slow growth manufacturing companies.  St. Louis has been trying to drive a bio-tech focus now for many years, and it has the headquarters (or large presence) of several healthcare companies:

• Express Scripts
• Centene
• BJC
• SSM Healthcare
• Ascension Health
• Pfizer’s Research Group (1200 people)
  

And, there are numerous smaller companies and healthcare start-ups here.  According to the St. Louis RCGA’s information on the BioBelt area here, we have more that 15,000 employees and 400 companies in this life science space.