Mercantile announces Fortune 500 ranking

Mercantile Bancorporation Inc. announced April 6 that it had been named to the Fortune 500 listing of America's largest corporations.

In recognizing Mercantile as a newcomer at No. 496 on the list, Fortune Magazine noted Mercantile's acquisition of Bruno Stolze and its expansion into Kentucky, according to a news release from Mercantile.

"This is yet another milestone for Mercantile, which has grown five-fold in asset size from 1990 to 1998," said Thomas H. Jacobsen, chairman and chief executive officer of Mercantile, in the release. "Within the past year, we were named to the S&P 500 and have broken into the list of Top 25 Banks. Mercantile is now the largest bank based in the lower Midwest."

The Fortune 500 rankings are determined by revenue and other performance measures, and will appear in the April 26 issue of Fortune Magazine, available now at its Web site

www.fortune.com.

Of the U.S. commercial banks listed, Mercantile ranks 24th in terms of total assets and 26th in revenues.

With headquarters in St. Louis, Mercantile Bancorporation operates banks in nearly 500 locations throughout Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Illinois, Arkansas and Kentucky.