General Electric Will Move Headquarters to Boston

The Boston region, Immelt said, is “an ecosystem that shares our aspirations”.

“GE aspires to be the most competitive company in the world”, GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt said. “We are excited to bring our headquarters to this dynamic and creative city”. “[Boston has] an innovative talent economy that GE wants to tap into”.

In June, Hamilton County officials made a pitch for GE to relocate its headquarters to Cincinnati.

GE ensures that the cost of the move will not have a significant financial impact on the company. In addition to the package of incentives that it will be receiving from the city of Boston and the state of MA, the company will also receive aid in offsetting the costs of the relocation. Up to $25 million in property tax relief was also offered to the company, which employs almost 5,000 across the state.

GE has approximately 5,700 employees in CT.

American industrial manufacturing giant GE will say goodbye to its headquarters in Fairfield, CT as it prepares to move to a new facility in Boston.

“Of course, we are disappointed, and we know that many in CT share that frustration”, Malloy said in a joint statement with Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman. It was not immediately clear how many employees will remain in CT.

“You win some and you lose some and luckily we’ve won more than we’ve lost but this hurts”, said the Governor.

“There were a lot of things that could have been done better and if we had to do them over again… but GE said in their article this has been in the planning for three years”, he said, so tax issues “obviously couldn’t be everything”.

GE has said it will host a public briefing in Boston with government officials, and business and community leaders, on February 18. A full move is expected to be completed by 2018.

“GE wasn’t looking for a deal”, Rep. John Frey, a Massachusetts Republican, told reporters.

“There’s no getting around it. Even Governor Malloy said this is a blow”, Ronald Schurin, an associate political science professor at UConn, said. In keeping with current corporate trends, and the goal of repositioning itself as a high-tech enterprise, GE will distribute the remainder of back office and administrative staff now housed in Fairfield to divisions throughout the company.

Joe Brennan, president and CEO of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, said he hopes the move will not tarnish the state’s image in the long term. GE Aviation, the largest exporter in OH, has been a major beneficiary of the bank’s financing. Companies usually ask for tax breaks in exchange for adding jobs, but what GE was requesting were tax breaks in return for not laying people off.

“General Electric, which is now based in Fairfield, Conn., has made good on its very strong hint – which it first mentioned last year- that it wasn’t happy with CT taxes and that it could leave the state”. Little information is available on that, according to the International Business Times. “They are eating our lunch because fiscal instability and anti-business sentiment from the Democrat majority make CT unappealing and unwelcoming”.