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Bright Horizon

by Savannah King

SixThirty is a family of enterprise technology venture funds that in 2020 entered its seventh year of “investing in early-stage enterprise (B2B) FinTech, InsurTech and Cybersecurity companies and driving collaboration with leading incumbents looking to embrace emerging technologies and new business models.”

The fintech seed fund has team members in Amsterdam, Singapore and New York. But its home base is in St. Louis, Missouri. That’s where the organization got its name: The city’s Gateway Arch, symbolizing access and opportunity, stands 630 feet tall.

“If you are hungry for capital, go to San Francisco,” the company likes to say. “If you are hungry for revenue, come to St. Louis.”

SixThirty says it is a “force multiplier” because of its insistence on collaboration in its unique Go-to-Market program. SixThirty meanwhile continues to develop its own collaborative relationships with legacy financial services leaders in Missouri.

St. Louis–based Commerce Bancshares in April 2021 announced it was deepening its relationship with SixThirty in order to drive innovation. Among the reasons cited by the venerable Missouri institution with $33.1 billion in assets: “St. Louis, where SixThirty is headquartered, offers a robust financial services community, serving as one of the largest financial services hubs outside of New York. SixThirty has been investing in fintech since 2013. Their integrated model nurtures growth and collaboration between its portfolio investments and corporate LPs, which include leading financial institutions across the United States.”

“Partnering with an organization like SixThirty is a natural fit for Commerce,” said Jennifer Upton, Commerce’s Manager of Corporate Strategy and Innovation. “Their focus on the convergence of wealth, health and data aligns with many of our strategic priorities. We look forward to the continued collaboration with SixThirty and its global reach into fintechs and innovation.”

Looking Forward

Convergence is something Missouri knows well, going back to the days generations ago when traders found the region a stepping-off point to the marketplaces to be found via the Mississippi River. Today, tech is the tributary. And talent is the vessel.

The Technology 2030 report from the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry found that in addition to the state’s low costs compared to other tech meccas, its resources “show that Missouri could become a major player in the emerging tech subsectors, such as advanced manufacturing, agtech and fintech.” Progress in broadband access throughout the state, expanded tech transfer from universities and increased small business funding will help the state get there.

A spinoff study conducted for the Chamber by Ted Abernathy of Economic Leadership LLC found that that the finance and insurance sector is the sixth-largest employer of tech workers in Missouri, with 14,932 jobs. Financial institutions increased their tech workforce by 19% from 2012 to 2017, with tech workers accounting for more than 11% of the total financial industry workforce in Missouri.

The ecosystem for continued fintech innovation includes curricular aspects like the new undergraduate fintech minor offered at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla. It includes stalwarts such as PayIt and H&R Block in Kansas City. And it includes the two-year Fountain City Fintech accelerator launched by NBKC bank in Kansas City that saw the bank support 20 entrepreneurs-in-residence. What happened? Another spinoff of sorts: The accelerator’s leader, Zach Anderson Pettet left for an opportunity with Bond.tech, a San Francisco-based fintech platform that wanted him to build a Midwest team in Kansas City.

Heart & Soul

Meanwhile, growth by financial services firms of all stripes continues to fill the state’s ledger.

In June 2019, RSM (once known by many as McGladrey) announced it would move from its former Kansas City location at 4801 Main St. to 46 Penn Centre in 2020. The company, which also maintains a St. Louis office in the bustling municipality of Clayton, plans to grow its Kansas City office from 220 to up to 400 employees over the next several years.

In October 2020, Veterans United Home Loans expanded on a just-opened corporate office in the St. Louis area by announcing it would hire 75 more employees by the end of the year. As part of its commitment to the region and its veterans, the Veterans United Foundation announced it was donating $500,000 toward the purchase of the land for the new Veterans Community Project tiny house campus in the Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood in St. Louis. The campus will house Veterans experiencing homelessness and will include a Veterans Outreach Center for walk-in support services.

“Veterans United Foundation is excited to help Veterans Community Project get its start in St. Louis,” said Dr. Amanda Andrade, Chief People Officer at Veterans United Home Loans. “We look forward to the great work VCP will do helping Veterans get back on their feet in the community, just as they have across the state in Kansas City. With our expanding presence in St Louis, we are excited that we get to continue our work with VCP, and we would love to encourage other companies to partner with this great organization too.” 

Veterans United has also recently invested in three other Missouri cities — Springfield, Columbia and Jefferson City.

Based in Columbia, Missouri (home of the University of Missouri’s flagship campus), the full-service national lender financed more than $16.4 billion in loans in 2019 and is the country’s largest VA lender. It employs more than 4,700 across more than 20 states.
The company recently received the Employee Support Freedom Award from the U.S. Secretary of Defense for its outstanding support of employees serving in the Guard and Reserve. And the company was ranked by Forbes in 2020 as the best employer in the state of Missouri. From January to October 2020, Veterans United had hired more than 1,000 employees and was projected to continue to hire at that pace “for the foreseeable future,” with Missouri at the heart of that growth.

That kind of momentum is one reason the state foresees a bright future in financial services and fintech innovation. 

Investment Profile

Bright Horizon

by Adam Bruns

Founded on densely wooded land once known as the Great Black Swamp, the City of Oregon’s heritage is replete with investments in water and wastewater infrastructure. In addition to railroad and port operations built up over the years, that’s what originally drew the BP and Toledo Refining Co. refineries to the area in the early 20th century. It was also crucial to the city’s success in fighting off a partial annexation in 1958, when Oregon adopted the motto “City of Opportunity.”

Today, this little corner of opportunity still beckons.

Of the eight gold-level investors in the Oregon Economic Development Foundation in Northwest Ohio, three are major energy players. Central to their message to outsiders is this: There’s room for more.

Specifically, 700 acres of room, “zoned industrial, waiting for you,” says the Foundation, which serves the needs of Lucas County’s largest suburb. Though the city remains focused on target sectors that include manufacturing, logistics and healthcare, energy has been the lead dog for 100 years — and figures to be for years to come.

One of those major players, BP-Husky Refining, has operated on its parcel near the mouth of the Maumee River since 1919. Today the site, operated by BP on behalf of a JV with Husky Energy, converts crude oil into almost 6 million gallons of product each day. With a processing capacity of 160,000 barrels of crude oil daily, the facility’s day-to-day operations are driven by about 600 BP employees and an equal number of contract workers.

The JV serves the Midwest and nearby Canadian markets. Since 2010, the JV has invested nearly $1 billion in the refinery.

Another major player, Toledo Refining Company (TRC), a subsidiary of PBF Energy, is located on a 282-acre site and processes light, sweet crude, with a throughput capacity of 170,000 barrels per day. The majority of TRC’s crude is delivered via pipelines that originate in both Canada and the United States. Toledo produces a high volume of finished products including gasoline and ultra-low sulfur diesel, in addition to a variety of high-value petrochemicals. Since PBF Energy acquired the refinery from Sunoco in 2011, the company has added additional truck and rail crude unloading capabilities that provide feedstock sourcing flexibility for the refinery and enable Toledo to run a more cost-advantaged crude slate. With over 500 employees and its additional onsite contractors, TRC is a major economic engine for Northwest Ohio.

Construction Junction

“Oregon, Ohio, is a great place to do business,” says Mark Dangler, president, BP-Husky Refining LLC and Refinery Manager. “The infrastructure — pipelines, water access, railroads and ample utilities — provides the foundation for our successful operation. The local community and the State of Ohio are strong supporters of our business and a major factor in our success. The local community and business agencies are very balanced and supportive of our business objectives. There is a predictable, reliable process for permitting, which is beneficial to any business.”

The reliability factor extends to those hundreds of workers, whom Dangler describes as highly skilled. There are several reasons those skills abound. Both refineries partner with the University of Toledo College of Engineering’s co-op program.

Mike Stack, BP-Husky safety advisor, looks over the JV’s refinery in Oregon, Ohio, situated on a 571-acre site just east of Toledo on Maumee Bay, and in continuous operation since 1919.

Photo courtesy of BP-Husky

“Toledo Refinery Co-Ops are hired on a rotation-by-rotation basis to gain practical, on-the-job experience,” says Dangler. “They are mainly individuals pursuing degrees in engineering — primarily chemical engineering. The students benefit from real-world training, and BP benefits from having access to a larger pool of experienced candidates. Upon graduation, many co-ops are offered full time employment.”

Oregon is not short on talent pipelines: In addition to UT, Lourdes University, Owens Community College and Bowling Green State University are all within a half-hour’s drive.

“Our own skilled-labor workforce is supported by Northwest Ohio Building Trades, which provides craftsmen and craftswomen from 18 different craft lines to support refinery operations,” says BP’s Dangler. “On a daily basis, the refinery has approximately 600 contractors working at our site. During large maintenance projects, that number can increase to up to 3,000.”

The refinery also benefits from FirstEnergy’s 136-MW Bay Shore power plant, where a fluidized-bed combustion boiler is fueled by 1,400 tons of petroleum coke byproduct per day from the refinery, helping the power plant reduce emissions.

Forward-Looking

Yet another progressive energy project is taking advantage of opportunity, as the 869-MW natural gas-fired combined-cycle power generating plant known as Oregon Clean Energy Center (OCEC) is under construction within the Cedar Point Development Park Foreign Trade Zone, and adjacent to 345-kV transmission lines. Natural gas for the OCEC will be delivered via yet another addition to the area’s extensive pipeline infrastructure: a new 24-inch pipeline from the Maumee hub. Water will be provided from Lake Erie by the City of Oregon.

The $860-million project — expected to begin commercial operations by July 2017 — will increase annual labor income by $3.9 million in Oregon and by an additional $1.6 million in other parts of Ohio, while also producing an additional $15.4 million in state and local tax revenue. It also replaces generation from several aging coal-fired power plants in the region that are being retired.

Lindsay Myers, executive director of the Oregon Economic Development Foundation, says the city’s partnership with the Toledo Lucas County Port Authority — half of whose operations are located in the city — is crucial. The Authority’s Ironville transload facility moves crude to trains. And Norfolk Southern and CSX have numerous tracks that serve Oregon’s industrial companies. “The rail and port are major reasons why we are able to be so successful in the energy sector,” she says.

With the host of products and pure power coming from the area, tiny Oregon is nothing less than Ohio’s energy hub — with an influence that stretches as far and wide as the Lake Erie horizon.


This Investment Profile was written under the auspices of the Oregon Economic Development Foundation. For more information, contact Executive Director Lindsay Myers at 419-693-9999 or
lmyers@oregonohio.com, or visit www.oregonohio.com.