Corporate Headquarters
Categories: Company Management
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.
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Finance: How does a board of directors f...27 Views
Finance a la Shmoop! How does a board of directors function?
All right, well structurally, the Board of Directors has really one function, after
it is elected by a vote, of the common shareholders, of the company. The board of
recruits, then hires the CEO and that's not necessarily easy. Because, most
of the good CEOs, you actually want, are already ensconced in high-paying jobs, [man being offered money]
from which they have to be bought away. Picking the right CEO, is the big
roulette wheel bet, the board makes. Is the CEO good, or bad, or ugly and yeah the
CEO can be all three. After being hired the CEO then hires everyone else, more or
less. In a public company, the board divides into committees, to advise and
oversee many of the little processes. There's audit committee people and
nomination and government committee people and Compensation Committee people.
In large companies there are also, often subcommittees, that focus on narrow
things, like technology, or politics and lobbying and, or the environment. You know, if [oil drill with man and duck]
you work for a big polluter. Well another big element of board value-add, revolves
around, strategy. Are we the high cost, high value company, or are we the low cost,
Walmart desk provider? That is, are we Pirates of the Caribbean, or are we La La
Land? What other strategic issues are we fighting? How do we get into China and [world map]
Russia and get out of Somalia? So yeah, that's strategy. How does the
board cover its primary obligations, in providing a fiduciary duty, to the
shareholders, who elected them? Is the board governing fairly and equitably?
Yeah, how do they do that? Well they just basically pay attention, right? Are
company policies racist, or gender biased, or ageist?
Which is illegal everywhere, except Silicon Valley in Hollywood. Are all the [director and actress]
right controls inspected, like audit, hiring, firing, policies and our
companies casual Fridays, have they gotten to just to casual? Is that a board item?
Yah, alright, next meeting. So yeah, that's the gist, hire the CEO, form
committees and of course they're also in charge of bagel Thursdays. [man in panda suit, bagels falling from sky]