Following the exodus of McDonnell Douglas Corp. in 1997, Trans World Airlines in 2001 and May Department Stores Co. in 2005, another St. Louis corporate icon departed last summer when Wachovia Corp. agreed to buy brokerage A.G. Edwards Inc. for $6.8 billion.

The purchase made Charlotte, N.C.-based Wachovia the nation's second-largest retail brokerage firm, after Merrill Lynch & Co. A.G. Edwards executives said the buyout was necessary to give it scale and access to new products necessary to compete in a changing industry.

Town and Country-based apparel marketer Kellwood Co. agreed in February to a $542 million takeover by Sun Capital Securities after twice rejecting the same bid.

Sun Capital, an affiliate of Boca Raton, Fla.-based leveraged-buyout firm Sun Capital Partners, successfully waged a proxy fight with Furniture Brands International Inc., getting three directors elected to the furniture maker's board. Another local company under pressure from dissident investors, Insituform Technologies Inc., also faced a contested board election this year.

And Chesterfield-based Angelica Corp. last week agreed to sell itself to an affiliate of global investment firm Lehman Brothers.

Several St. Louis area companies got bigger through mergers and acquisitions during the last year:

•Ralcorp Holdings Inc. in November agreed to merge its business with Post cereals, the maker of Raisin Bran and Fruity Pebbles, in a $2.65 billion deal expected to close this summer. The combination will give Ralcorp control of the country's No. 3 cereal line and $3.3 billion in additional annual sales.

•Biotech giant Monsanto Co. completed its $1.5 billion takeover of cottonseed rival Delta & Pine Land Co. in June. More recently, Creve Coeur-based Monsanto also agreed to pay $860 million for De Ruiter Seeds Group BV, a Dutch-based vegetable seed company.

•Town and Country-based Energizer Holdings Inc., the country's No. 2 seller of batteries and razors, bought Westport, Conn.-based Playtex Products Inc. last fall for about $1.2 billion in a deal that added sun-care lotions, tampons and baby bottles to its product list.

•In November, St. Louis-based coal producer Peabody Energy Corp. spun off most of its West Virginia and Kentucky mining operations into a new publicly traded company, Patriot Coal Corp. Within six months, Patriot agreed to buy rival Magnum Coal Co. for $709 million to create the second-largest coal company in the eastern United States.

jtomich@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8320