Tech company headquarters moving to China?

From WSJ Blog on China:



April 30, 2008, 4:33 am

If at First You Don’t Succeed…


Here’s one novel solution for what to do when your company’s planned sale to a Sino-American investment group is upended by U.S. fears about China: move your headquarters to Beijing.



That’s not quite what U.S. network equipment company 3Com is doing - but it’s close. A month after its deal to be bought by U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital and Chinese telecommunication gear maker Huawei Technologies fell apart because of purported national security concerns over Huawei’s planned minority stake, 3Com announced Tuesday that it had replaced its CEO with a new boss - who will be based in China.



Robert Mao, the incoming chief (pictured), is a fluent mandarin-Chinese speaker and a veteran of China’s telecom business, having headed operations there for both Alcatel and Nortel. He replaces Edgar Masri, a veteran of the U.S. tech industry who was appointed in August 2006 (and who isn’t fluent in Chinese - although he’s been studying, as he discusses in this YouTube video.)



3Com’s official headquarters will remain 10,800 kilometers (6,700 miles) away, in Marlborough, Mass., where a newly named COO will oversee the company’s business outside China. But the relocation of the CEO job shows just how important China has become for global technology companies - especially 3Com. While much of its business has fallen on hard times in recent years, 3Com has been booming in China. In the last quarter, fully half its revenue came from the country, and H3C Technologies, its Chinese subsidiary, was the only major business segment that made an operating profit.



Its headquarters may still be in Massachusetts, but 3Com’s heart is increasingly in China. -Jason Dean