DALLAS (AP) - Texas is king of the hill when it comes to corporate
headquarters.
The Lone Star State passed New York as home to the most big companies in the
latest list compiled by Fortune magazine.
Texas now boasts 58 headquarters, three more than New York, the previous No.
1, and California, with 52.
Business experts say it's a matter of simple economics -- Texas attracts
companies with its low taxes, affordable land and large labor force.
"Cost is overwhelmingly the No. 1 driver," said Albert W. Niemi Jr., dean of
the business school at Southern Methodist University, who wrote his doctoral
thesis about companies leaving the Northeast for the Sun Belt 30 years ago.
Irving-based Exxon Mobil Corp. remained the biggest Texas-headquartered
company by 2007 revenue, and No. 2 nationally, behind Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Exxon
Mobil, however, was more profitable, earning $40.6 billion.
Four of the largest six corporations in Texas last year were oil companies,
but the state's economy is more diverse than it was a generation ago.
Other Texas companies on the magazine's list include technology, such as
Dell Inc., three of the nation's biggest airlines, two of the biggest
homebuilders, an insurer, a hospital company and the largest garbage hauler
around.
Texas has been attracting big companies from out of state for nearly three
decades, including American Airlines in 1979. Exxon -- before it bought Mobil --
and J.C. Penney Co. arrived in the following decade. All three came from New
York.
In recent years, Fortune 500 companies such as Tenet Healthcare Corp. and --
just last year -- engineering and construction company Fluor Corp. moved in from
California.
The reverse Gold Rush from California to Texas has concerned West Coast
officials for years. In 2004, consultant Bain & Co. surveyed big companies for a
California business group and found that half planned to shift jobs out of state
or at least stop expanding in California because of high costs, including taxes.
Of that group, 27 percent said they would go to Texas, more than any other
state.
Lyssa Jenkens, chief economist for the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce,
said there is a snowball effect -- once a few big companies move in, others
follow.
"If you move to Dallas-Fort Worth or Houston, you're in the company of other
large companies," she said. "They like to be near each other because there are
all kinds of services for corporate headquarters -- law, accounting,
engineering, (information technology) services."
Some companies look at Texas but walk away. The state engaged in a very
public courtship of Boeing Co. in 2001 but lost to Chicago.
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