South Gaining Steam as Corporate Headquarters Location

From 1975 to 2002, only three Fortune 500 companies relocated their headquarters to markets in the South. During 2003, three Fortune 500 companies and a host of other large corporations announced they would relocate their headquarters to the American South from other U.S. regions.

The three Fortune 500s that bit the bullet and moved South this year from costlier regions are Fidelity National (from Santa Barbara, Calif. to Jacksonville, Fla.), Philip Morris (from New York City to Richmond, Va.) and Newell Rubbermaid (from Freeport, Ill., to Atlanta, Ga.) Therefore, in just one year as many Fortune 500 companies relocated their headquarters to the South as did in the the previous 27 years.

But three Fortune 500s relocating their headquarters to the South, even in one year, does not give us enough ammunition to say, "we told you so." In addition to Fidelity, PM USA and Newell Rubbermaid, marque corporate names such as Louisiana-Pacific (Portland, Ore. to Nashville, Tenn.), R.H. Donnelley (Purchase, NY to Raleigh-Durham, N.C.), DHL, (Seattle, Wash. to South Florida) and Asurion (San Mateo, Calif. to Nashville, Tenn.) relocated their HQs to the South this year. There were more.

Fortune 500s in Southern States
Texas 65
Virginia 25
Florida 22
Georgia 19
Missouri 18
North Carolina 16
Maryland 13
Alabama 12
Tennessee 10
Louisiana 7
Kentucky 6
Oklahoma 6
Arkansas 5
Kansas 5
South Carolina 4
Mississippi 2
West Virginia 1

Operating cost is a big driver for the projects discussed above, but so is quality of life offered by what Pepperdine University's Joel Kotkin calls "second-tier cities."

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