San Francisco was ruled out partly because of its high living costs, and the longer time difference – by three hours, compared with the East Coast – in communicating with GE’s units in Europe, where the company has a sizable business.
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The Fortune 500 company and Dow component has also considered other cities like New York, Providence, R.I. and several others for its headquarters.
The decision followed months of rumors and published reports of various locations being scouted by GE for its global headquarters, including neighboring Westchester County, and closed-door meetings with CT officials fighting to retain the technology and engineering conglomerate. The relocation will be done in stages, with the full move completed by 2018.
GE’s headquarters is assessed at $76.5 million and generated about $1.8 million in taxes for Fairfield previous year.
In Boston, GE will also have 800 people, but it will have a different kind of headquarters setting, the company said. A GE Digital Foundry would be created for co-creation, incubation, and product development with customers, startups, and partners.
Brennan said discussions he’s had with GE indicate the company has been frustrated for years about the uncertainty and lack of predictability with Connecticut’s budget, the “lurching between tax increases and deficits”.
As a $130 billion global firm, GE is “leading the digital transformation of industry”, Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt said in a statement.
According to Immelt, Boston ecosystem shares the aspirations of his company. So is access to top academic talent and innovation; GE specifically cited Greater Boston’s 55 colleges and universities. MA invest more on research and development compared to any other region in the world, and Boston attracts a technologically-fluent, diverse workforce engrossed on resolving challenges for the world. “For two decades, we’ve had companies move out of our city”.
The company said it chose Boston after a consideration of factors including the business ecosystem, quality of life for employees and connections with the world.
The company employs approximately 5,000 workers in MA. The company moved its Life Sciences headquarters to Marlborough, MA, in 2014 and announced previous year that Current, its energy services start-up, would be headquartered in Boston. Other cities, including NY, made strong bids, but in the end it was Boston, the person involved in the talks said.
“General Electric’s decision to move their headquarters and jobs from CT to MA is a direct result of Democrat Gov. Dan Malloy’s failed leadership and eagerness to drive business out of his state through job-killing policies”. In addition to focusing on investments in infrastructure and and higher-education to provide the talent necessary to meet the needs of high-tech employers, Malloy said the state will make an effort to focus on the needs of high-tech start-ups, small businesses and major employers in the state such as United Technologies. It was not immediately clear how many employees will remain in CT.
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“GE recognizes the innovations in our city, the educational institutions in our city, the diversity of our city, the people of our city, and the business-friendly environment of our city that we’re putting out there”, Walsh said.
