On Wednesday, the company said that it is going to sell the 68-acre Fairfield campus and two floors of offices that were with it for executives at Rockefeller Center in New York City.
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General Electric Co.will move its headquarters to Boston after a dispute with CT over tax increases prompted the industrial giant to leave its home of more than 40 years, the Boston Globe and the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Those workers, split between the company’s GE Digital, Current, robotics and life sciences divisions, will be better able to share technology developments across business units, the company said, helping develop software applications to run the machinery the company manufacturers. In addition the city of Boston offered up to $25 million in property tax relief. Greater Boston is home to 55 colleges and universities. GE Healthcare said it would move its corporate headquarters and an unspecified number of jobs to Chicago, from the United Kingdom. This was probably the first instance in state history of a company making a request of that nature, officials said at the time. CT ranked 44th, near the bottom.
“Reports that CT officials intend to raise taxes by another $750 million are truly discouraging”, GE officials said in a statement.
The company has made no-bones about its dislike of Connecticut’ tax policies, citing the state’s overall tax burden as the reason for the move – which has been in the works since last summer.
GE in its statement noted it already has a significant presence in MA, with almost 5,000 employees scattered across the state.
But talent also was a draw.
Three years ago, the $130 billion high-tech global industrial company said it began considering a new composition and location for its headquarters.
What’s more, Logan International Airport is just a 12-minute ride from the city center, and Boston boasts a decent transportation system.
GE is attempting to position itself as a “digital industrial” company by expanding a business providing data analytical capabilities for its heavy-duty equipment. GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt fanned the flames when he wrote a memo earlier in 2015 complaining about tax changes enacted by the state legislature a year ago. A spokesman said approximately 800 people are employed at the Fairfield headquarters.
The scale of the GE infrastructure investments could dwarf what the state has done in the past. “I certainly think there will be employees coming from Worcester and Central Mass when they’re up here and settled”.
GE had been based in Fairfield, Conn., since 1974.
Bound for the Seaport District in downtown Boston, GE said it will relocate 200 corporate staff from its Fairfield headquarters, which employs about 800 people. After all, the “combined reporting” changes corporate lobbyists in CT complained most vocally about have been in place in MA since 2008.
“We’ve got to make an environment here where more companies want to come here”, he said.
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GE announced in November that it was selling its electricity meters business to Aclara in a deal that includes GE Meters global headquarters in Somersworth and more than 300 employees.
