When a Fortunate 500 corporation leaves a city, what happens to who is left behind? What happens to the local restaurant owners? The real estate market? The club sports teams? The charities? In this post, I want to explore a similar case study involving GE departing the Connecticut town of Fairfield. Dino Sakakini, owner of a restaurant called Layla’s Falafel, was quite pessimistic about UBS’ impending move back to Manhattan.…

Another way of viewing the corporate flight of Fortune 500 companies in Stamford may be the volatile nature of the financial services industry. Perhaps Stamford was simply unfortunate to have housed the American headquarters of two European banks, which are facing unique financial challenges as the entire continent of Europe struggles to cope with several debt crises. RBS, or the Royal Bank of Scotland, which is now controlled by the…

In 1994, UBS set off municipal warfare when it announced its decisions to move from its two Manhattan locations, one in Midtown and the other in the Financial District, to the comparatively quieter suburb of Stamford. Some experts speculated that financial firms no longer needed to be headquartered in the outrageously expensive and cramped locations in Manhattan, due to growth of computerized trading and telecommunications platforms such as Skype and…