Corporate Headquarters

An executive committee needs a place to...plot. There they can toil and dream of ways to get customers' cash into their pockets.

Eh...okay. Companies have an obligation to establish a central location for their management team to operate. The term corporate headquarters has no hidden meaning. It’s just the central hub of a corporation’s leadership and operations. The firm probably operates human resources and finances out of it. They probably have a meeting room where they discuss business-like business-y things. And there is probably a really cranky employee who walks past his boss’ reserved spot each morning and curses at the sky.

Fortune 500 companies have their headquarters spread across the United States. New York has the most headquarters for Fortune 500 companies of any state in the U.S, with California right behind it.

Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming have....zero. That says less about taxation and public policy, and likely more about infrastructure, housing, and the amount and quality of human capital that can be employed in companies that require so many people in order to compete and remain elite. Doesn’t mean Utah and Wyoming don't have talented people. It just means that places like New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Chicago are central hubs of business activity, and it doesn’t make sense to put 50,000 people in the middle of the Northern Plains without significant infrastructure and some sort of NFL team to watch.