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Some exciting quotes for Queensland. Slams in the face of the recent article in the CM saying all our head offices are moving down south!!!

"I find it a great asset because the key to success of our business is people," he says. "Brisbane is an attraction to get people to move to. It's hard to get people to move to Sydney."

"Brisbane won out by virtue of the fact it's more of a mining city now than Sydney and Melbourne are," managing director Arthur Hood says. "You're close enough to the capital markets that you can hop on a plane and be down there in an hour. But it's also a good place to be if you are looking at growing a company in the Asia-Pacific region."

Average economic growth in Queensland has been 4.7 per cent a year over the decade to 2004-05, versus 3.5 per cent for the rest of Australia. Employment growth has averaged 2.8 per cent, against 1.8 per cent over the same period. Queensland's annual population growth over the past 10 years, at 2 per cent, has been double that of the rest of Australia. Recently Queensland, with 20 per cent of Australia's population, has been accounting for nearly one-third of its population growth, and almost 30 per cent of its economic expansion.

But there are some industries Queensland has made its own. Almost all the listed child-care companies have been based in the state, which was one of the first in Australia to develop a major private day-care industry. And property management rights companies S8 and Oaks are both based in Queensland, as is the BreakFree/Stella Resorts subsidiary of fast-growing Gold Coast financial group MFS.

When Rio Tinto merged the management of its Australian coal businesses, it chose Brisbane, where its Queensland coal operations were already headquartered. And while Rio Tinto's nominal Australian headquarters is in Melbourne, it has far more managers in Brisbane, running the coal operations, and aluminium subsidiary Comalco.

Alot of conflicting stories..somewhere in the middle is where I would assume the reality is.

That is a fairly misleading title, the article is really about the rise and rise of QLD native businesses and the growth of interstate subsidiaries in QLD. It cites 2 examples of major businesses shifting south, but doesn't really give a definative example of a major southern business shifting its head office north....Its all great news for QLD, but why the need to take some abstract shot at NSW/VIC in the title...? Who said the QLD media wasn't parochial :jk: :runaway:

Er, it's from the AFR...

^^ Oh well... It was tongue in cheek anyway. AFR seems to periodically do these "i'm better than you" stories comparing cities (usually Syd vs Melb) I think they don't have alot to do....

Great article! Thanks for sharing locke! :)
The future is here...as it says on my sig

The article was written by the AFR's Queensland Business Reporter and I agree the title is pretty misleading but nonetheless it's still good to hear that Queensland based companies are growing. Good to hear that companies in general are growing at all actually no matter where they are in our country.