ACS Strategic Growth

Austin, TX

Austin is considered to be a major center for high tech. Thousands of graduates each year from the engineering and computer science programs at the University of Texas at Austin provide a steady source of employees that help to fuel Austin’s technology and defense industry sectors. The region’s rapid growth has led Forbes to rank the Austin metropolitan area number one among all big cities for jobs. Austin’s largest employers include the Austin Independent School District, the City of Austin, Dell, the U.S. Federal Government, Freescale Semiconductor (spun off from Motorola in 2004), IBM, St. David’s Healthcare Partnership, Seton Family of Hospitals, the State of Texas, the Texas State University, and the University of Texas at Austin. Other high-tech companies with operations in Austin include 3M, Amazon, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Google, Qualcomm, Inc., AMD, Applied Materials, Cirrus Logic, ARM Holdings, Cisco Systems, Electronic Arts, Flextronics, Facebook, eBay/PayPal, Bioware, Blizzard Entertainment, Hoover’s, Intel Corporation, National Instruments, Rackspace, RetailMeNot, Rooster Teeth, Spansion, Buffalo Technology, Silicon Laboratories, Xerox, Oracle, Hostgator, Samsung Group, HomeAway, and United Devices.

Dallas, TX

The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex has one of the largest concentrations of corporate headquarters for publicly traded companies in the United States. The city of Dallas has 12 Fortune 500 companies and the DFW region as a whole has 20. Comerica Bank and AT&T located their headquarters in Dallas. Irving is home to four Fortune 500 companies of its own, including ExxonMobil, the most profitable company in the world and the second largest by revenue, Kimberly-Clark, Fluor (engineering), and Commercial Metals. Additional companies headquartered in the Metroplex include Southwest Airlines, American Airlines, RadioShack, Neiman Marcus, 7-Eleven, Brinker International, AMS Pictures, id Software, ENSCO Offshore Drilling, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Chuck E. Cheese’s, Zales and Fossil. Corporate headquarters in the northern suburb of Plano include HP Enterprise Services, Frito Lay, Dr Pepper Snapple Group, and JCPenney. Many of these companies – and others throughout the DFW metroplex – comprise the Dallas Regional Chamber.

Los Angeles, CA

The economy of Los Angeles is driven by international trade, entertainment (television, motion pictures, video games, recorded music), aerospace, technology, petroleum, fashion, apparel, and tourism. Los Angeles is also the largest manufacturing center in the western United States. The contiguous ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach together comprise the fifth-busiest port in the world and the most significant port in the Western Hemisphere and is vital to trade within the Pacific Rim. Other significant industries include media production, finance, telecommunications, law, healthcare, and transportation. The city is home to six Fortune 500 companies. They are energy company Occidental Petroleum, healthcare provider Health Net, metals distributor Reliance Steel & Aluminium, engineering firm AECOM, real estate group CBRE Group and builder Tutor Perini.

Stockholm, Sweden

The vast majority of Stockholm residents work in the service industry, which accounts for roughly 85% of jobs in Stockholm. The almost total absence of heavy industry (and fossil fuel power plants) makes Stockholm one of the world’s cleanest metropolises. The last decade has seen a significant number of jobs created in high technology companies. Large employers include IBM, Ericsson, and Electrolux. A major IT centre is located in Kista, in northern Stockholm. Stockholm is Sweden’s financial centre. Major Swedish banks, such as Nordea, Swedbank, Handelsbanken, and Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken, are headquartered in Stockholm, as are the major insurance companies Skandia, Folksam and Trygg-Hansa. Additionally, about 45% of Swedish companies with more than 200 employees are headquartered in Stockholm. Famous clothes retailer H&M is also headquartered in the city. In recent years, tourism has played an important part in the city’s economy. Stockholm County is ranked as the 10th largest visitor destination in Europe, with over 10 million commercial overnight stays per year.

Vancouver

With its location on the Pacific Rim and at the western terminus of Canada’s transcontinental highway and rail routes, Vancouver is one of the nation’s largest industrial centres. The Port of Vancouver, Canada’s largest and most diversified, does more than C$75 billion in trade with over 130 different economies annually. Port activities generate $10.5 billion in gross domestic product and $22 billion in economic output. Vancouver is also the headquarters of forest product and mining companies. In recent years, Vancouver has become an increasingly important centre for software development, biotechnology, aerospace, video game development, animation studios and a vibrant television production and film industry. Vancouver’s scenic location makes it a major tourist destination. Many visit to see the city’s gardens, Stanley Park, Queen Elizabeth Park, VanDusen Botanical Garden and the mountains, ocean, forest and parklands which surround the city. Each year over a million people pass through Vancouver on cruise ship vacations, often bound for Alaska.