'Fifth China Headquarters Economy Forum' held in Wuhan

By Guo Rui (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-10-19 17:25

"The Fifth China Headquarters Economy Forum" was held in Wuhan recently. The conference introduced the first Annual Report on China's Headquarters Economy (2009-2010). The report discusses the economic impact and locations of major corporate headquarters in 35 major cities in China. It also ranks major cities in terms of how well they accommodate corporate headquarters.

Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen were the top four cities in the report's ranking. Wuhan was the only city in central China listed in the top ten.

"Wuhan has gathered 74 world's top 500-invested enterprises, as well as more than 300 offices in multinational companies, said by Yang Song, the secretary of Wuhan Municipal Committee and deputy secretary of Hubei Provincial Committee.

The conference also featured a presentation by Wang Jianlin, the chairman of Wanda Group, a commercial real estate and hotel company. Wang said that his company has invested more than 40 billion yuan, including two contracts for four new five-star hotels totaling nearly 16 billion yuan into Wuhan. That is more than Wanda's investment in all of China's fifty other major cities.

"If it is not optimistic about this city, we would not put much money to invest" Wang said. The forum was hosted by the Wuhan Municipal People's Government and the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, and co-sponsored by the Beijing Municipal Academy of Social Sciences of China, the Headquarters Economy Research Center, Wuchang District, Wuhan City People's Government and Beijing, Fundi Institute for Economic Development.