Halliburton, the American oil services giant, will be shifting its corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai. The company’s chairman, president and CEO’s — David Lesar — new home and office will now be in the Middle East.

 

While Houston will continue to house the company’s corporate office, Halliburton will now be controlled from Dubai.

 

The oil major is not the only company to have made such a radical move. Cisco set up a Chief Globalization Officer position in India in December last year, and Wim Elfrink moved from San Jose to Bangalore with his family. Six other Cisco families moved to Banagalore along with Elfrink.

 And, in May last year, IBM moved some of its leadership positions to Shenzhen in China, when John Paterson, VP and chief procurement officer relocated from New York.  

For these companies, this is the first time that headquarter positions have moved outside the U.S.

 

So, what’s going on? Why are companies moving their C-level positions overseas?

 

The companies’ moves coincide with their increasing focus on the Eastern hemisphere. For Halliburton it is the Middle Eastern and Asian oil, and for Cisco and IBM it is the hemisphere’s growing telecom and technology markets.

 

Other than key markets, companies also stand to benefit form sourcing from their new hubs — Cisco hopes to tap into India’s technology labor pool while IBM is looking at China for its procurement supply chain.

 

Such moves are strategic for these companies — their attempt is for their key persons to be physically close to their markets and not handle them remotely.

 

Bloggers seem to disagree, at least in the Halliburton case. They claim that the company is moving to Dubai because of its liberal tax structure and easy investment. That’s probably true as well — why shouldn’t a company take advantage of easy taxation?

 

What do you think is happening here? Will we see more such moves happening? Will they be driven strategically?

 Btw, we met Elfrink, Cisco’s Chief Globalization Officer, and will have a detailed features story for you on how globalization is redefining C-Level positions in the next issue of Global Services due out in April. The story will also be up at our website toward the end of March.