Central European Business Review 2018, 7(4):61-79 | DOI: 10.18267/j.cebr.206

An Overview of German Centers of Corporate Dominance and Motives for Corporate Headquarters Relocation

Ladislav Tyll1, Mohit Srivastava2, Florián Brezina3
1 Department of Strategy, Faculty of Business Administration, University of Economics, Prague, Nám. W. Churchilla 4, 130 67 Prague 3, Czech Republic, ladislav.tyll@vse.cz
2 Department of Strategy, Faculty of Business Administration, University of Economics, Prague, Nám. W. Churchilla 4, 130 67 Prague 3, Czech Republic, mohit.srivastava@vse.cz
3 Department of Strategy, Faculty of Business Administration, University of Economics, Prague, Nám. W. Churchilla 4, 130 67 Prague 3, Czech Republic, bref00@vse.cz

The purpose of this paper is to identify the centers of corporate dominance in Germany, and the main drivers of recent headquarter relocations within the country. The analysis is based on a literature review, a database comprising the 10,000 most significant companies in Germany and additional research for qualitative input to support the interpretation of the findings. The findings show that corporate dominance in Germany is decentralized. Centers with relative corporate dominance tend to host a higher proportion of public limited companies. These public limited companies had a turnover of over one billion Euros, and most of these companies were founded after the year 2000. The main drivers for recent HQ relocations were corporate restructuring (mergers and demergers) and the centralization of functions. Furthermore, it has been found that differences in the trade tax burden between municipalities have had no influence on recent relocation decisions within Germany.

Keywords: Germany, centers of corporate dominance, headquarter relocation, HQ relocation drivers
JEL classification: M30, M31

Received: November 15, 2018; Revised: December 30, 2018; Published: February 1, 2019  Show citation

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Tyll, L., Srivastava, M., & Brezina, F. (2018). An Overview of German Centers of Corporate Dominance and Motives for Corporate Headquarters Relocation. Central European Business Review, 7(4), 61-79. doi: 10.18267/j.cebr.206
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