Add it up and Dallas Gains
North Texas already has a stable of high-profile corporate headquarters, and it’s in a good position to woo more as companies seek to move from expensive areas to cheaper ones, a New Jersey relocation consultant says. Of 30 major U.S. cities, the Dallas-Fort Worth area offered the fourth-lowest annual operating cost for corporate headquarters, according to a recent study by John Boyd, head of the Boyd Co., a relocation consulting
firm based in Princeton, N.J.
His study takes into account “geographically variable operating costs” such as labor and utilities costs that are involved in operating a headquarters – in other words, the expenses you can change by moving somewhere else.
Counting up
· New York still leads the nation, with 45 headquarters for companies on the Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S. corporations.
· Houston is No. 2, with 22, followed by Atlanta, with 12, according to the 2007 Fortune 500.
· Dallas ties with Chicago for fourth place, with 11 headquarters. But add in companies based in Fort Worth, Plano, Irving and other local cities, and the Dallas-Fort Worth area’s tally climbs to 24. (As a state, Texas ranks second, behind New York but ahead of California in the number of corporate headquarters.)
Dallas Morning News, August 2007
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