Headquarters Landscape in Austria: An Overview

Headquarters (HQs) of multinational corporations (MNCs) play an important role in the economy of a country, since they perform high value-adding activities, employ highly qualified personnel, and yield corporate and tax income. Thanks to its position at the heart of Europe and other characteristics that contribute to make the country particularly attractive for MNCs, Austria is home to several domestic and foreign HQs. With this descriptive report, we aim at providing a comprehensive and detailed overview of the HQ landscape in Austria. Drawing on a database created in 2021 by triangulating data retrieved from “Orbis” (Bureau van Dijk) with other publicly available data from companies’ annual reports and previous reports, we identified 1,439 HQs in Austria. An analysis of the types of HQs, their location, size, sector, and origin unveils interesting findings. First, Austria is home to many domestic corporate HQs, but it also hosts many intermediary HQs of large corporations from foreign countries in Europe (e.g., Germany) and from abroad (e.g., USA). Many of these countries choose Austria to access its neighboring countries, such as Germany and Eastern European countries. Moreover, the HQ landscape in Austria is characterized by a variety of industries and HQ sizes, although small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) dominate the scene. Finally, Vienna is clearly the center of Austria’s HQ economy, with 569 HQs located in the capital city.