WorldCity Business Magazine

(1) publisher's note - Giving Multinationals Their Due

by Ian McCluskey

A WorldCity study will measure the true influence of South Floridas oft under-estimated multinational business community

Quick, how many billion-dollar companies reside in South Florida? If you answered about a dozen, which would be the response from most people familiar with the corporate
landscape of the tri-county area, you would be wrong. Dead wrong.

Thats because you would be ignoring at least another dozen headquarters of multinational companies that run their regional operations from here. And youd be surprised not only at the size of these operations, but at the power, as well as the regional and global influence of the executives who run them.

Consider just two of South Floridas most prominent multinational companies.

HP Latin America manages an army of 11,400 employees across Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean, and does about $5 billion in revenues each year. Caterpillar Latin America does about the same—$5 billion in annual sales.

That puts Rui da Costa and Tom Gales, the top executives at HP Latin America and Caterpillar Latin America, among the most powerful corporate leaders in this town. Only Office Depot ($15 billion), Carnival Corporation ($12 billion), World Fuel Resources ($11 billion), Ryder System ($6 billion) and Royal Caribbean ($5.2 billion) can claim to be bigger players.

Whats that you say? What about other homegrown stars such Brightstar, Citrix, Burger King, Spherion and Perry Ellis? Nope. None of these global operations comes close to the size of the regional operations of HP and Caterpillar. And these two massive regional operations are not alone. The South Florida offices of UPS, Danone, AIG, Kraft, DHL and many others all run billion-dollar businesses.

We already know that there are 1,250 multinational companies with a presence in South Florida. We know that they employ some 180,000 people locally and manage a total of roughly 850,000 people throughout the region.

Now, with the support of the Beacon Council, WORLD CITY has embarked upon a study to measure the annual revenues managed by the offices of multinational companies in South Florida.

This Global Economic Influence Study will result in a number which is guaranteed to astound many people. We estimate that it will be significantly larger than the GDP of the tricounty area. Hint: the GDP of Miami-Dade is $80 billion.

Together with the Beacon Council, we will reveal the true impact and global influence of South Floridas multinational community at a special event in January. Stay tuned.

Contact: imccluskey@worldcityweb.com