Fortune magazine gives St. Louis credit for eight companies in the new Fortune 500 list. That’s the same number as last year, which isn’t bad in this era of corporate consolidation. The Regional Chamber and Growth Association, though, wants to boost our number to nine.

It’s counting Smurfit-Stone Container, which Fortune lists as a Chicago company. The RCGA argues that Smurfit-Stone maintains dual headquarters in Chicago and Creve Coeur, which is exactly what page 115 of Smurfit-Stone’s annual report indicates. I believe that the legal headquarters is in Chicago, but CEO Patrick Moore and several other key functions, including media relations, investor relations and treasury operations, are based in Creve Coeur.

The RCGA makes another good point when it notes that our roster of Fortune 1000 companies grew by one in the past year. Kellwood left the list, while Belden and MEMC Electronic Materials joined it.

Our tub-thumpers should stop short, though, of trying to compare the number of Fortune 500 companies in various metro areas. Fortune’s listings put some companies in the nearest major city, but they list suburban addresses for others. Unless you go through the list carefully, it’s hard to get a valid count for some metro areas. For example, the RCGA says St. Louis has the same number of Fortune 500 companies as Atlanta. Indeed, Fortune lists nine top 500 companies with Atlanta addresses. Pull out a map, though, and you’ll see that Duluth, Ga., also is in the Atlanta metro area. It’s home to No. 359 Agco. By my count, that gives Atlanta 10 companies, one more than St. Louis. I suspect that San Francisco, a city that the RCGA says is behind St. Louis, also fares better when you count suburban companies.

For those of you keeping score at home, here’s the local Fortune 500 roster for 2008:

• 111. Emerson
• 135. Express Scripts
• 149. Anheuser-Busch
• 305. Monsanto
• 329. Ameren
• 334. Smurfit-Stone Container
• 409. Charter Communications
• 432. Peabody Energy
• 455. Graybar Electric

Note: an early version of this post had an incorrect name for Jefferson Smurfit’s Smurfit-Stone’s CEO.