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I knew this data sounded familiar, we had a similar thread last year... 2022 Fortune 1000 Headquarters By City Proper
New York, New York 69
Houston, Texas 35
Chicago, Illinois 27
Atlanta, Georgia 24
San Francisco, California 22
Dallas, Texas 19
San Jose, California 15
Columbus, Ohio 13
St Louis, Missouri 13
Charlotte, North Carolina 12
Denver, Colorado 11
Irving, Texas 11
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 11
Boston, Massachusetts 9
Cincinnati, Ohio 9
Cleveland, Ohio 9
Minneapolis, Minnesota 9
Seattle, Washington 9
Santa Clara, California 9
San Diego, California 8
Omaha, Nebraska 7
Phoenix, Arizona 7
Indianapolis, Indiana 6
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 6
Washington, District of Columbia 6
Reston, Virginia 6
Detroit, Michigan 5
Jacksonville, Florida 5
Los Angeles, California 5
Nashville, Tennessee 5
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 5
St Paul, Minnesota 5
San Antonio, Texas 5
Spring, Texas 5
[url]https://fortune.com/fortune500/2022/search/[
Even though I already know this looking at the DFW relocation, but Irving definitely gets lots of HQs...
Spring TX is also somewhat popular...and this is with Houston being really high on HQ list (Thanks oil & gas industry).
And to show how far down LA is, it's tie with the like of San Antonio...or St Paul MN...(Ok Philly is also at 5 out of F1000).
Really surprised LA is so low (11 companies), thought it was big for media HQs (Disney, DreamWorks, AT&T etc). I guess all the consolidation has led to fewer individual companies.
Why does DFW have so many? I can't name a company there offhand, and I'm not sure what industries would be based there. Railroads/rail shipping? Agriculture? I guess American Airlines is there.
I use to work for a media company and honestly when I look at job postings, I see much more jobs in media companies in NYC than I do for LA.
Yeah that is the definition of relocation.
But there is a difference between a company moving to an area slowly and a company growing there from the bottom up. The latter is referred to as homegrown.
A company like Neiman Marcus has history with DFW. It is home grown. A company like McKesson that tested the waters by having some employees in the area and then decided to move the headquarters there isn't the history i'm taking about.
In its 200 year existence McKesson has spent 120 in NY, 70 in SF and like 5 in DFW. AT&T, Caterpillar, CBRE, even Exxon all had casual associations with DFW before the headquarters were moved there.
Companies get poached all across the country constantly but I think DFW has been king. The other Texas cities don't come close.
Don’t get me wrong. I definitely agree that Houston does have more of a legacy of starting and growing major corporations while DFW has been more centered on relocations. Even a lot of Houston’s newer F500s are home grown (Crown Castle, Academy Sports + Outdoors, KBR).
However. I’m just pointing out that it’s not black and white. DFW’s relocations have for the most part had contributions from local start ups getting absorbed. Even the AT&T example you listed out earlier, there was already an extremely large Southwestern Bell presence in DFW for a long time. It was a major telecom hub dating back to the original AT&T days (the Stanford Oil of Telecom, not the current AT&T). All of these relocations besides Tesla have a long history in the metro before the relocation occurs.
Don’t get me wrong. I definitely agree that Houston does have more of a legacy of starting and growing major corporations while DFW has been more centered on relocations. Even a lot of Houston’s newer F500s are home grown (Crown Castle, Academy Sports + Outdoors, KBR).
However. I’m just pointing out that it’s not black and white. DFW’s relocations have for the most part had contributions from local start ups getting absorbed. Even the AT&T example you listed out earlier, there was already an extremely large Southwestern Bell presence in DFW for a long time. It was a major telecom hub dating back to the original AT&T days (the Stanford Oil of Telecom, not the current AT&T). All of these relocations besides Tesla have a long history in the metro before the relocation occurs.
Yes, I do get that they had workers there before the headquarters transferred, but that is true for all corporate relocations.
But I'm not talking about just having workers.
Yes Southwest Bell had a presence all over Texas but that was a San Antonio company not a Dallas one.
I'm talking about companies being grown in an area, but transferred to the area.
It seems like Houston has the better environment to grow companies while the state bends over backwards to throw incentives to lure companies to DFW.
Going back to Exxon. You can trace the growth of Humble Oil from the meetings of its founders to them adopting the Exxon branding. It was ALWAYS connected to Houston. Even while Jersey Standard was buying up shares in Humble Oil, the operations still was maintained in Houston under the Humble Oil brand. 800 Bell was named the Humble Oil building for life 5 decades AFTER Jersey Standard bought out majority shares in Humble OIl. So it was still very much a Houston company.
Another example would be Green Mountain Energy. The brand so exists and is headquartered in Austin. But it's owned by NRG. For as long as it maintains its own brand I still see it as an Austin company because they still maintain the brand.
Let's say for example that green energy takes off, and the Green Mountain brand is assumed by NRG and the offices are consolated in Houston and then moves to Austin, I wouldn't necessarily call it just Austin poaching a company because that brand was in Austin all the time.
The relocations in DFW are not really like that. It's not home grown branches emerging. It's more like straight up relocations.
AIG, HPE, Exxon all had homegrown connections with Houston. It's like Houston is a good incubator for companies while Dallas is a good place for them to hang out after they are grown. I can't think of any of the 10 or so biggest companies in DFW that were grown in DFW
Houston is the global HQ of the energy industry, so it's only natural that it will incubate companies in that space just like the Bay Area does for tech, LA does for media, NYC does for finance, etc.
Outside of energy, the dynamic of Houston and Dallas don't seem all that different to me. I think DFW has a slightly better reputation domestically for whatever reason and companies that are arbitrarily relocating their HQ might find DFW a little more palatable to their employees, but certainly Houston has seen relocations as well.
Austin isn't a big enough city to be super attractive as a F500 HQ and it's also a bit more expensive to operate in than DFW or Houston. Austin has plenty of home grown companies, they just tend to be in niche industries that aren't big enough markets to grow to F500 size. (Even the tech companies in Austin tend to be e-commerce plays with specific verticals, not mass-market consumer products.) There is a good number of homegrown companies with valuations in the single digit billions, though.
Houston is the global HQ of the energy industry, so it's only natural that it will incubate companies in that space just like the Bay Area does for tech, LA does for media, NYC does for finance, etc.
Outside of energy, the dynamic of Houston and Dallas don't seem all that different to me. I think DFW has a slightly better reputation domestically for whatever reason and companies that are arbitrarily relocating their HQ might find DFW a little more palatable to their employees, but certainly Houston has seen relocations as well.
Austin isn't a big enough city to be super attractive as a F500 HQ and it's also a bit more expensive to operate in than DFW or Houston. Austin has plenty of home grown companies, they just tend to be in niche industries that aren't big enough markets to grow to F500 size. (Even the tech companies in Austin tend to be e-commerce plays with specific verticals, not mass-market consumer products.) There is a good number of homegrown companies with valuations in the single digit billions, though.
NY is the undisputed media capital of the world. When you look at all forms of media - news, financial, entertainment, art, culture, sports, politics, music - it's not even close.
Burbank (LA) is more specifically an entertainment media capital.
Houston is more well rounded than people give it credit for. And it definitely has an air of innovation that grows more companies locally than Dallas.
It incubates companies in a variety of industries industries.
Look at the last few f500 companies. They range from insurance (AIG going back 100 years) HPE (going back decades to the Compaq era) even Dallas companies such as Texas Instruments were subsidiaries of Houston companies like Halliburton. Again Dallas is where companies go in their retirement. Once they are matured. Houston is where the companies earn their wings.
Companies like Charles Schwab, McKesson, Caterpillar, CBRE, Kimberly-Clark just doesn't have the homegrown feel. They all got huge and famous elsewhere in the country.
Looking at Houston's other f500 companies you get a range from Food based companies like Sysco to Waste Management.
Houston's portfolio is deeper than Austin's so it covers more variety.
Toyota Motor’s North America HQ was once based in Torrance (Southern California, LA Metro) and is now in Plano, Texas. They relocated in 2017, if my memory is correct.
Had an old classmate who worked in Finance there, and was given a relocation package to move. She took it and is happy she did.
Just a word of caution on the "city proper" numbers - some companies may have a postal address for a particular city but are not actually located in the city limits. Thus I wouldn't recommend calculating headquarters numbers per capita at the city level as this can yield some misleading figures.
In metro Atlanta, there are large clusters of corporate facilities in the northern suburb of Sandy Springs as well as unincorporated Vinings in Cobb County. These locations have Atlanta addresses but are not in the city of Atlanta.
St. Louis is another metro area where much of the inner suburban area in St. Louis County shares an address with the central city.
Just a word of caution on the "city proper" numbers - some companies may have a postal address for a particular city but are not actually located in the city limits. Thus I wouldn't recommend calculating headquarters numbers per capita at the city level as this can yield some misleading figures.
In metro Atlanta, there are large clusters of corporate facilities in the northern suburb of Sandy Springs as well as unincorporated Vinings in Cobb County. These locations have Atlanta addresses but are not in the city of Atlanta.
St. Louis is another metro area where much of the inner suburban area in St. Louis County shares an address with the central city.
The unincorporated areas are counted in every city, not just Atlanta.
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