Metro Atlanta will likely gain another Fortune 500 company, although it’s not exactly on many folks’ radar screens at the moment.
That’s because packaging company Veritiv Corp., which is scheduled to begin publicly trading Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange, is being cobbled together from a private Norcross company, Unisource Worldwide, and xpedx, an Ohio-based spin-off from International Paper.
A Veritiv spokesman said the company plans to move its headquarters to Atlanta, though it’s unclear whether the move will bring jobs. The firms, which announced the spinoff and merger in January, plan to initially keep dual headquarters in Norcross and Loveland, Ohio.
“We’re very excited about having the company in Atlanta,” Veritiv spokesman Ed Patterson said. But he said it’s too soon to know how the merger will affect jobs in any location.
The merged company will have nearly $10 billion in revenue and 9,500 employees, and will add to Georgia’s growing list of big corporations. Georgia currently has 17 of the nation’s 500 largest public companies, according to Fortune magazine, which ranks them by revenue.
Veritiv would land in the middle of the pack on Fortune’s list. Along with homebuilder PulteGroup, which moved its headquarters from Michigan to Atlanta in May, that would boost the state’s Fortune 500 total to 19.
Veritiv now has about 500 metro Atlanta employees at Unisource’s headquarters and an xpedx distribution center in Suwanee, Patterson said. The companies sell and distribute office paper, packaging and other products to business customers.
About the Author
