Hispanic Business magazine has named 22 regional companies to its annual list of top 500 Hispanic companies. The list, in the June issue, named nearly two dozen District, Maryland and Virginia companies as being among the 500 largest Hispanic-owned firms in the country.
Fairfax County has the highest number of listed companies in the Washington area with 12, most in the technology and government contracting fields. Maryland had seven companies on the 2006 list and the District had three.
“Our company has been listed since 1997 and we moved up from 380 to 99, which is a good sign of positive growth,” said Enrique Tessada, CEO of Tessada and Associates Inc., of Springfield. “Being in the Hispanic Business list is just as a matter of people [knowing] our size and exposure.”
According to Hispanic Business, Virginia moved into fifth place nationally with 20 companies. The growth comes from companies involved in government contracting. New Virginia companies on the list reported $182.4 million in revenues from federal contracts in 2005. MVN ranked 35th in the Hispanic Business List.
There were 7,302 Hispanic-owned firms operating in Fairfax County in 2002 (the latest data available), representing $1.1 billion in sales and receipts. They employed 10,422 people and had payrolls totaling more than $335.7 million.
“Fairfax County’s proximity to the federal government and Dulles Airport, our highly skilled labor force, the great quality of life and an aggressive outreach program that supports the growth of small and minority-owned companies permitted this result,” said Gerald Gordon, president and CEO of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority.
