Capital One is in the top spot for the Top 50 employers

Capital One is No. 1.

The McLean-based financial-services, credit-card and banking company returned to the top spot on the Top 50 list of the area's largest private employers this year for the first time since 2006.

The company gained 887 full-time equivalent employees, or a 12.7 percent increase, as of Jan. 1 compared with the same date a year ago.

Capital One had the largest year-to-year gain in full-time equivalent, or FTE, employment of any company on the Richmond Times-Dispatch's annual Top 50 list of private employers. FTE is a combination of full- and part-time workers.

This is the 19th consecutive year the newspaper has produced the list.

Capital One replaced Virginia Commonwealth University Health System, which had held the top spot in the survey for the past three years. VCU Health System ranked second this year.

The total number of employees on the list rose 3.6 percent year over year.

Twenty-five companies on this year's list reported gains. Four reported no change in local employment, and 21 shed employees.

This compares with 17 companies reporting job gains in 2010 and 21 doing so in 2009.

"I think the general data shows the area is starting to pick up again," said Greg Wingfield, president of the Greater Richmond Partnership, a public-private regional economic development agency.

"It shows a lot statistically about what we're feeling anecdotally."

Finance, real estate and health insurance sectors make up 30 percent of the companies in the Top 50 but account for more than 50 percent of the new jobs, said Wingfield, who worked with his staff to help analyze this year's report.

That is reflected in the growth shown by Capital One, Markel, BB&T, Wells Fargo and Mondial Assistance. Bank of America held steady this year, and SunTrust was the only bank to report a drop.

Health care is another industry that showed strength, said Tom Arnold, associate professor of finance at the University of Richmond.

"It seems like health care is doing fairly well," he said.

The three largest area hospital companies accounted for combined FTE gains of 1,200, with HCA Corp. leading the way by adding 603 FTEs, followed by VCU Health System and Bon Secours. Southside Regional Medical Center in Petersburg fell slightly.

Christine Chmura, president and chief economist at Richmond-based Chmura Economics & Analytics, said health care's numbers come as no surprise.

"Health care is one of the sectors that continued to increase through the recession," she said.

Although this year's list showed more gains, Arnold said the economy is far from booming.

"As far as concerns, a number of employers have reduced jobs," Arnold said. "It indicates the recovery has been slow."

The largest declines in this year's survey occurred at utilities. Officials with Dominion Resources Inc., parent company of Dominion Virginia Power, the state's largest utility, and Verizon Communications cited the same reason: employees opting for buyouts.

"It's important to note that most of the job reductions were through voluntary incentive offers," Verizon's Public Relations Director Harry J. Mitchell said of Verizon's 415 FTE employment decline.

The drop of 477 positions at Dominion Resources came because "we had voluntary separation companywide," spokesman Chet Wade said.

Three companies — Macy's, McKesson Medical-Surgical and Performance Food Group — returned to the list this year. Macy's dropped off last year's list because it did not report its numbers.

The Martin Agency was the lone newcomer to this year's list, reporting in with 580 FTE positions, a gain of 133 from the previous year. The Shockoe Slip-based agency has added some big-name clients to its roster in the past year, including Cool Whip, Morgan Stanley, Tylenol and ESPN3.com.

Three companies — Food Lion, Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. and Bostwick Laboratories — fell off this year's list because those firms either failed to report or opted not to participate.

Also leaving the list this year was Ukrop's Super Markets Inc., which was sold to Martin's Food Markets in 2010.

The family-owned business now operates as Ukrop's Homestyle Foods and employs 334 FTEs. Its bakery and prepared-food products are sold to grocery stores, including Martin's Food Markets and dozens of Kroger stores in Virginia outside of the Richmond area.

Martin's Food Markets did not make the list because it reported total workforce — 3,626 employees — instead of FTEs.

When Capital One held the top spot in 2006, the financial services company reported 7,057 FTE positions. Four years earlier, it had more than 10,000.

Julie Rakes, the company's director of corporate communications, said a big factor in the past year's growth is Capital One's efforts to get into local banking along with an expanded focus on the national credit-card and automobile-loans operations.

Capital One bought three banks in recent years in markets outside of Virginia — Hibernia National Bank in New Orleans, North Fork Bank in areas in and around New York City and Chevy Chase Bank in Maryland, Rakes said.

That created the need for more support jobs in the Richmond area to work in the call center, provide information technology support, do marketing analysis and project management, Rakes said.

Some of the growth locally is from consolidating some operations from elsewhere into Richmond area facilities, she said.

Capital One's key local operations are in several buildings in the West Creek office park in Goochland County. It is leasing 200,000 square feet in two buildings that are under renovation in the Innsbrook Corporate Center business park in western Henrico.

The changing economy also has been a factor, she said. "Things are starting to improve. We're definitely looking at continued growth this year."

Rakes said the company currently has numerous job openings.

Although Capital One was No. 1, Markel Corp. gets the award for biggest percentage gain. The number of FTEs at the Henrico County specialty insurer rose 41 percent year-over-year.

Markel jumped 15 spots on this year's list, from 36 to 21.

"It's to do primarily with acquisitions in our Markel Ventures section," Vice President Bruce Kay said.

The company's Markel Ventures subsidiary has bought major stakes in companies in the past year including Diamond Healthcare Corp., a Richmond-based company that manages behavioral health programs, and RD Holdings LLC, a nationwide retail intelligence service based in Henrico.

Markel also owns stakes in AMF Bakery Systems; ParkLand Ventures Inc., a mobile-home park owner and operator; and Markel-Eagle Partners LLC, which rescued the West Broad Village development in the Short Pump area of Henrico.

Markel didn't do a great deal of hiring at its core insurance business in 2010, but it did not lay anyone off, Kay said.

He predicts a growth year for Markel as the economy continues to improve in 2011.

"You have to be a good steward right now," Kay said. "We're not going to go out and hire a lot of people like a Capital One. You hire people right now because you need them."

Although Kay and others are optimistic that the economy is healing, the Greater Richmond Partnership's Wingfield said he is "bullish."

"We have a fair number of prospects in our pool" of companies looking to expand in the Richmond market, Wingfield said. "The pipeline is starting to fill up."