WorldCity Business Magazine

On the map

by Mary Dempsey

South Florida’s multinationals have a dramatic global reach. Collectively, they oversee five times as many employees outside South Florida as they do locally.

South Florida’s multinationals can claim credit for more than 169,000 jobs in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. But more telling is the number of people outside South Florida who are managed from those local offices.

Think of a multiplier of three.

WorldCity’s Who’s Here database shows that 560,000 workers around the globe are managed by multinational offices in South Florida. The figure is an indication of the scope and influence of the locally based offices.

The most dramatic example is Office Depot, with annual global sales exceeding $14 billion. The office-supply company exerts a command that goes far beyond its 3,800 local employees. In total, it manages 45,000 employees from its headquarters in Delray Beach nearly its entire global payroll.

Burger King is right behind when it comes to dramatic ratios. The fast-food company’s headquarters in Miami manages has a payroll of 2,000 workers, but oversees 32,000 employees globally.

Among companies with both a cross-border work force and a presence in South Florida, America Airlines reigns as the top employer with 9,000 local employees. PRC, formerly known as Precision Response Corp., is No. 2 with 6,000 local employees although its Plantation offices manages 10,000 people globally, including at its offshore calling centers in the Dominican Republic, the Philippines and India. PRC operates call centers and uses Voice-over-Internet-Protocol and other technology to help companies track their customer needs.

As global trade increases and more and more companies look to Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton as convenient gateways to Latin America, Miami’s profile as a “world city” is gaining new strength. South Florida now has connections to more than 1,290 international companies, defined by WorldCity as those with in multiple countries.

For inclusion in the Who’s Here database, a company must have at least one office outside the United States and at least one in Miami-Dade, Broward or Palm Beach counties.

South Florida’s appeal to multinationals is due to its geography it’s a logical gateway from the United States for business into Central America, the Caribbean and South America. By the same token, Latin American companies see Miami as their gateway into North America. Best of all, it’s a multilingual city with good air connections to Latin America and a workforce more likely to understand cross-cultural issues.

Even Mexico, which still has its greatest business ties with Texas and California, is seeing Miami’s appeal. There are now 12 multinationals based in Mexico with offices in South Florida.

Next Wave

Now European and even Asian companies are solidifying their presence within the “world city” community. Many of those foreign firms are using the greater Miami area as their regional headquarters for all the Americas, hoping to gain footholds in both the United States and Latin America from a single city.

From China alone, three new companies have opened their doors in South Florida, bringing the number of Chinese multinationals here to five.

Among the foreign countries with multinational representation in South Florida, seven of the Top 10 are in Europe: the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The other three are Japan, Canada and Brazil.

South Florida now faces the challenge of how to continue to draw these companies. For one thing, stepped-up security and immigration rules have international executives complaining about the hassles involved in travel to and from the United States.

In 2001, when WorldCity began compiling the Who’s Here database, the list contained 850 multinationals from 47 countries. The number of countries has only grown by five, but the roster of companies has jumped 50 percent.