Unneighborly tussle for Northrop HQ

Md., D.C., Va. wooing Fortune 100 company
By Jamie Smith Hopkins | jamie.smith.hopkins@baltsun.com

January 6, 2010

There's nothing like competing for the headquarters of one of the nation's largest companies to make neighboring jurisdictions feel less neighborly.

When defense-contracting giant Northrop Grumman Corp. announced this week that it will move its Los Angeles headquarters to the Washington region, officials in Maryland, the District of Columbia and Virginia immediately pledged to woo the company with aggressive campaigns to showcase their strengths, such as a highly educated work force, good schools or low taxes. Those efforts could include tax breaks or other financial incentives.

"Game's on," said Jim Dinegar, president and chief executive of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, which positions itself as a neutral cheerleader in this three-way match.

It's the prestige of being home to a Fortune 100 headquarters that local leaders particularly want, along with having highly paid top executives as residents and the extra charitable giving, civic involvement and economic growth they can provide. Where one big firm moves, economic developers hope, others will follow.

Northrop Grumman already employs more than 40,000 in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia, so the 300 extra jobs that would come with its main office are a small number by comparison.

For Maryland, success would be especially sweet. The state has had a long history of losing headquarters to mergers, the latest being Black & Decker of Towson. It also has a reputation for being less friendly to business than Virginia, whose officials noted Tuesday that the state has been ranked No. 1 four years in a row on the "Best States For Business" list at Forbes.com. (Maryland was 12th on the most recent ranking, pulled down in part by its higher taxes.)

"When we look at Northrop, to us, that's one of those opportunities that doesn't come around very often," said Christian S. Johansson, Maryland's secretary of business and economic development. "We're going to be aggressively pursuing this. ... We can really make a good business case for why Northrop should be choosing Maryland." More here.