General Electric plans to move headquarters to Boston

General Electric (GE) will announce Thursday that it has picked Boston for its global headquarters, according to the Boston Globe, which cited an official familiar with the process.

The shares gained 14 cents to $28.78 at 11 a.m.in NY trading. Deirdre Latour, a GE spokeswoman, declined to comment on GE’s plans when reached by Bloomberg.

GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt decided over the summer to start looking for a new location for the company’s headquarters.

Fairfield has been home to GE for four decades with many employees living in Westport. After considering offers from Atlanta and other Southern destinations, GE narrowed its search to the Northeast, with cities taking top priority, according to reports. Governor Dannel Malloy revised some of the corporate income-tax increases and held meetings with GE executives to try to persuade them to stay put. The state was eager to shed the “Taxachusetts” label it had been stuck with in the ’70s, the paper reported. People familiar with the company’s thinking also said the company had outgrown its dated office campus in suburban Fairfield, a relic of a different corporate era that no longer reflected the sort of environment in which the most promising talent wanted to work. About $31 billion of total revenue came from manufacturing operations.