The 10 biggest companies headquartered in Charlotte
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The 10 biggest companies headquartered in the Charlotte region — the largest publicly traded local ones by revenue — range from banks to manufacturers to a car retailer. Most appeared on the annual Fortune 500 list released several months ago.
Why it matters: Local corporations are major employers that play an outsized role in how Charlotte functions — including how it grows and how some charitable causes are funded.
The following are the largest companies headquartered in the Charlotte region, as well as their 2023 revenue and total employee count, according to Fortune.
- Local employee head counts come directly from company spokespeople. If the entries do not include a local employee head count, it means a company representative did not respond by deadline.
- The Charlotte region is also home to many privately held corporations with significant revenue, including Red Ventures and Hendrick Automotive Group. Those companies don't report their financials, however.
Bank of America: $171.9 billion
- The Charlotte bank employs nearly 213,000 people globally, including about 19,000 locally, per the Observer.
Lowe's $86.4 billion
- The home improvement retailer employs approximately 300,000, including more than 10,500 locally between its stores, its Mooresville headquarters and at its South End tech hub.
Honeywell: $36.7 billion
- The conglomerate — which makes everything from jet engines to home thermostats, as I wrote for the Observer in 2019 — relocated its headquarters from New Jersey to Charlotte in 2019. It has about 95,000 employees.
Nucor: $34.7 billion
- The Charlotte steelmaker employs 22,000, with about 200 in its Charlotte corporate offices on Rexford Road in SouthPark.
Truist: $33.2 billion
- The Charlotte-based bank, the product of the 2019 merger of SunTrust and BB&T, employs approximately 40,000 total but declined to provide its local head count.
Duke Energy: $28.9 billion
- North Carolina's regulated monopoly utility, which has its headquarters in Uptown, employs over 27,000.
Sonic Automotive: $14.4 billion
- The local car retailer, which employs about 10,500, has its corporate headquarters in Cotswold.
Albemarle Corp.: $9.6 billion
- The local chemicals manufacturer employs about 9,000 total, including more than 800 employees in the Charlotte area.
Domtar: $7 billion
- The pulp and paper manufacturer has a total of about 13,000 employees — including approximately 500 at its corporate office in Fort Mill and about 60 at a converting plant in Rock Hill.
CommScope: $6.99 billion
- The network infrastructure provider in Catawba County employs about 20,000 and declined to provide its local headcount.
Of note: LPL Financial, which is "dual-headquartered" in Fort Mill and San Diego, is also one of the biggest companies in the region, ranking No. 392 on the Fortune 500 list.
Editor's note: We've updated this story with fresh employee counts as we receive them.