Boston: General Electric Moving its Global Headquarters to City

Its announcement followed a report by the Boston Globe that the move was confirmed.

“We won the powerball here in Boston by having GE come”, Mayor Marty Walsh said. Tax Foundation analyst Jared Walczak told Reuters that Connecticut’s corporate income tax rate is nominally 7.5%, but GE likely pays an effective rate of 9% due to surcharges on growth income, versus 8% in MA. In mid 2015, the firm threatened to leave CT, complaining about the state’s tax environment.

According to Immelt, Boston ecosystem shares the aspirations of his company.

The area is crowded with 55 colleges and universities, including research centers like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and Northeastern University.

GE’s selection of its next headquarters city comes the same week that Chicago received a consolation prize of sorts from the company.

The company said it had been considering the composition and location of its headquarters for more than three years, and its formal review began with a list of 40 potential locations in June.

While Boston’s political and business leaders rejoiced at adding what Forbes ranks as the 9th most valuable brand in the world, their CT counterparts said the departure will have spillover effects on the state beyond just the loss of GE’s jobs.

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.

Seth Martin, a GE spokesman, said the Boston location will become home to 200 corporate employees and 600 digital industrial product managers, designers and developers. GE will establish a “Digital Foundry” to create, incubate and develop products together with customers, startups and partners. He insisted GE is moving its headquarters because of a high-tech corporate strategy shift, which fits better with Boston’s high-tech economy.

General Electric will be leaving its Fairfield headquaters for Boston.

The move, which is expected to begin this summer with some workers occupying temporary quarters in Boston, should be completed by 2018.

The company plans to hold a “public briefing” in Boston on February 18, 2016.

Today’s decision is a clear signal that CT must continue to adapt to a changing business climate.

Nabbing GE would have been a nice win for Chicago, which has made news nationally for months, most of it negative. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can.

“They deserve an apology from every Democrat lawmaker whose disrespectful comments mocked companies like GE when they raised legitimate concerns about the state budget”.

GE now employs 5700 people in CT and 800 people at its global headquarters in Fairfield. “These are challenges that need to be met by the [Malloy] administration”. The company moved its Life Sciences headquarters to Marlborough, MA, in 2014 and announced past year that Current, its energy services start-up, would be headquartered in Boston. That can be read as: Logan International Airport.

“Of course I’m disappointed”, Malloy said.

However, it remains to be seen how big of a role it will play and how many legislative races it could impact. Nor is the $111 billion of state pension debt. Even some of GE’s competitors here say the move will be felt around the world.

And though Malloy didn’t release details, he did confirm previously that some package of financial incentives was offered. In this case, we may fix spelling and punctuation.