Was just reading an article on The Guardian about how Channel 4 is moving their HQ from London to Leeds, which was the 3rd favourite behind Birmingham and Manchester.
Many months ago I started a thread asking which comparable countries have a city or cities that dominate or control their country more than here. Well there are quite a few. UK, France and Japan are the most obvious. There are a few obvious factors that contribute to that and those were well discussed.
In a corporate sense, I've wondered about this kind of thing for several years now because I work Downtown TO, but for a company that is HQ in a small city, where my company is an institution.
In that city, the employees are spread out through four buildings, and one is on the other side of town. This is because as they grew, the head office was not big enough to accommodate everyone. And there would never be enough vacant office space at one time to consolidate everyone in a new location. As well, building from scratch would be prohibitively expensive. There were thoughts about relocating to TO, but given their history in their hometown and not wanting to disrupt the comfortable lives of their existing employees, that idea was dismissed.
Anyway, here's a question I thought I'd ask. What are some examples of corporations here that surprisingly moved their HQ to another city? Even if decisions are still made in a small office that remained behind, but the majority of the positions moved. Whether it was from big city to small city or small city, where they are culturally ingrained, to the big city, where they are just another company.
What was the reasoning? Tax incentives? Closer proximity to their clients or the resource they extract?
Montreal has lots of examples of HQs moving way back when, but don't know if those really qualify as surprising given the circumstances.
Here's an example my old boss told me of because he himself was worried if his company would be next because he was also at a lifeco:
Quote:
1992 — Moving to Regina
Two eastern-based financial institutions announced they were relocating to Regina. Crown Life, a 90-year-old Toronto-based life insurance company, said it was packing its bags and moving to Regina, in exchange for a $250-million equity injection from the province. About 1,000 jobs were relocated, although all but the most senior Crown Life employees chose not to move to Regina. The same year, federal agricultural lender Farm Credit Corp. (later Farm Credit Canada) announced it was moving from Ottawa to Regina. Crown Life was eventually swallowed by Canada Life, then Great-West Life, but maintains a significant operation in Regina. FCC continues to make Regina its head office.
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Quote:
Soaring above the bid decision itself, there is an even greater principle at stake. For as long as I can remember, senior ministers have been paying lip service to the argument that London’s grip on the life of the nation is seriously excessive, and that more attention must be paid to what is variously called “decentralisation”, “devolution”, “regionalisation” and much else besides.
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Quote:
What makes Channel 4’s relocation so remarkable is that it absolutely does not fit this pattern. For once, a blue-chip national institution with global reach really will be leaving London. And – though the move involves only a single company and 300 employees – its ripple effect is potentially immense. For the first time, a front-rank media organisation at the heart of the nation’s cultural life will be unambiguously based outside the capital.
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Quote:
The broadcaster also announced that Bristol and Glasgow had been chosen to house two smaller creative hubs, with Cardiff missing out. This will take the total number of Channel 4 workers moving out of London to about 300.
The majority of staff, including Mahon, will remain in the capital but the chief executive said she expected to spend a significant proportion of her time in Yorkshire and the other regional bases.
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