Ideal places for public companies

Just as an Indiana company goes through the nationâ??s first initial public offering in months, its executives ratchet up their
plans to move the headquarters out
of state.

Mead Johnson, the Evansville baby formula maker, staged a successful IPO on Wednesday, and saw its share price climb 10 percent
on its first day as a public company.

But the execs intend to move the headquarters and several dozen people to Chicagoâ??s northern suburbs, where nutritional expertise
and flights are easier to come by.

Lots of public companies have headquarters in small- and medium-sized cities. Wabash National, which manufactures truck trailers,
is in Lafayette. Kimball International makes furniture in the southern Indiana hardwood center of Jasper. Warsaw, in northern
Indiana, has Zimmer, the prosthetics giant.

Is a smaller city inherently deficient as a home for a public company headquarters? Is there anything inherently wrong with
Evansville?

For that matter, how about Indianapolis as a headquarters city? After all, precious few Fortune 500 companies call Indianapolis
home.