Kansas City Southern Takeover Downplayed Despite Major Economic Impact

Actually, our blog community has been saying as much for about a year.

But, as always, we welcome more people to the discussion . . .

Here's an important part of the conversation . . .

The railroad company, based here since its founding during the Grover Cleveland administration, was bought by Canadian Pacific for $31 billion. That news was buried on page six of the Kansas City Star and did not prompt a flurry of tweets from Mayor Quinton Lucas.

It’s a sign of how the discourse around the city’s economy is a bit skewed, according to Chris Kuehl, director of Armada Corporate Intelligence, which provides strategic advice, economic forecasting and business analysis for corporate clients.

“We often overlook some of the more fundamental, long-lasting things,” Kuehl says. “People forget that Kansas City is a huge auto manufacturing town. They forget about aerospace. They forget about the transportation sector. Strangely enough, they forget about agribusiness. How do how you forget about agribusiness in the middle of the ag sector? But, you know, we tend to overlook things like that because other stuff seems sexier.”

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news link . . .

While locals obsessed over the sale of Cerner, an even bigger acquisition was quietly shaping the future of the local economy

Last fall, one of Kansas City's iconic companies sold for $30 billion after a brief bidding war. It was a homegrown company with thousands of employees which was, in many ways, synonymous with the city but with a footprint that stretches across the country.