Every time a Chicago-based company leaves town, the hand-wringing begins over Chicago losing its cachet as headquarters city.
It happened when Waste Management was acquired. And Amoco. And Ameritech. And on and on. Now the same drama is playing out because of Quaker Oats and Dean Foods.
So it’s particularly notable that, while all these mergers have seen headquarters evaporate, Chicago never was in danger of losing its ranking as a U.S. corporate hub.
Chicago continues to be No. 2, behind New York, in the numbers of major headquarters. In fact, it added headquarters over the past decade: In 2000, Chicago had 107 large corporate headquarters, up by 11 from 1990.
New York gained 19 large headquarters in the same period, for a total of 239, according to a new study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, which defines “large companies” as publicly traded companies with at least 2,500 employees.
Neither city gained as many headquarters as San Francisco (up 39, for a total of 52) or Houston (up 29, for a total of 70).
And the Chicago area might have 128 large headquarters, instead of 107, if it was not so tied to the shrinking manufacturing sector, the Fed determined.
Still, it didn’t have a net loss of headquarters, as did Cleveland (down 11, to 35). Nor did Chicago gain a meager two headquarters like Detroit (to 34).
If nothing else, the Fed’s confirmation that Chicago remains a top-notch locale for headquarters should alleviate the city’s inferiority complex a bit. And that boost comes a lot cheaper than Boeing is.
Happier customers: One of the biggest questions surrounding the turnaround of Bank One Corp. has been whether customer service has improved at its gigantic credit card business.
Although problems have surfaced elsewhere in the Chicago-based company, it was service troubles at First USA that spurred a series of earnings shortfalls at Bank One in 1999. As a result, the company’s stock price dropped by half and has not recovered fully.
Philip Heasley, who has run First USA for a few months, has evidence of improved customer service.
When problems–which included incorrectly posted late fees–were at their worst, more than 30 percent of First USA’s customers contacted the company each month with complaints and issues. That rate is now less than 20 percent a month, Heasley said in an interview last week.
Customer satisfaction, which had been in the 60s (on a 100-point scale), is above 80, he said.
And to bolster those statistical findings, Heasley finds his mailbox is no longer inundated with complaints.
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“I answer all the customer complaints I get personally, and the average weekly volume is probably one-tenth what it was,” said Heasley, whose office is at First USA’s headquarters in Wilmington, Del., but who regularly visits Chicago.
Bank notes: Stephen Cole, former chief executive of Cash Station Inc., was appointed chief executive of the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago.
– At a hearing last week in Washington on his nomination to be chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Texas banker Donald Powell told the Senate Banking Committee that enforcement of existing bank underwriting guidelines “can go a long way toward eliminating” predatory lending.
Many regulators and lawmakers at both the federal and state level have been pushing more stringent new regulations to try to curb the abusive lending practices.