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atlrvr

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Again, I think this discussion is important. I don't know if it should be moved to another topic. I know that there is a claim, that when 400 jobs move in, more jobs are created from that. I do not know how that is determined. One other thing. This $100,000 average. Wouldn't the upper level executives being paid millions, skew this average so much that it becomes meaningless. Not everyone who will work there will make $100,000. It's all very complicated and really smacks of corporate welfare. My personal feeling is that a state or city should be helping small business's that already exist. Maybe this type of help already exists. They have a connection with the area and perhaps one of those would be the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. These are the real job makers.

Along the same lines, corporate HQ's moving. I grew up 15 miles from down town Pittsburgh. In those years, Pittsburgh had a lot of Fortune 500 HQ's. If memory serves, the city was 3rd. New York and Chicago being 1st and 2nd. The collapse of the Steel industry devastated the city. The result was many companies simply moving or disappearing. One that stood out to me was Rockwell International. They hired a new CEO who was from California. He did not like Pittsburgh. The company abruptly moved to CA. Rockwell was a good corporate citizen and then was gone. More recently, Mellon Bank which had been headquartered in Pittsburgh forever, bought Bank of NY and moved the HQ to New York. I guess these large companies holding the threat of moving over the cities head is scary as hell. Corporate greed and the welfare they receive is ridiculous.

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Again, I think this discussion is important. I don't know if it should be moved to another topic. I know that there is a claim, that when 400 jobs move in, more jobs are created from that. I do not know how that is determined. One other thing. This $100,000 average. Wouldn't the upper level executives being paid millions, skew this average so much that it becomes meaningless. Not everyone who will work there will make $100,000. It's all very complicated and really smacks of corporate welfare. My personal feeling is that a state or city should be helping small business's that already exist. Maybe this type of help already exists. They have a connection with the area and perhaps one of those would be the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. These are the real job makers.

The Observer posted a breakdown of the jobs vs. salary a few days ago:

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/12/01/2817970/chiquita-jobs-breakdown-by-salary.html

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While I am all for encouraging corp relocation to the QC I cant see Sears being a worthy investment. I am usually in Sears once or twice a year and every time I am struck by how much it feels like shopping in 1985. They (Sears and Kmart both) just seem to be consistently unable to adapt to modern retailing. Since it looks like their days as an independent retailer are numbered, any money spent to incentivise Sears would be money wasted (IMO).

http://money.cnn.com...?source=cnn_bin

Edited by kermit
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^I'm with you on that. I don't want the states of NC or SC to get in the bidding war for Sears. Ohio is said to be offering up to $400 million in incentives. That's just insane. I'm glad that Charlotte is continuing to diversify the economy, but that's WAY too steep of a price for an especially stale company. I find it interesting though that it's mostly rust belt states like Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, etc that are involved here. Seems those in the south know better.

cltbwimob pointed out that Convergys, a relationship management company, is adding 150 local jobs. Interesting that another Cincinnati company will be putting jobs here. With the sudden Cincinatti influence here it would be nice to get them to open a Montgomery Inn in town :) Some of the best ribs around!

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^For those that can't, Toyko-based investment bank Nomura is looking at adding up to 300 new jobs to uptown Charlotte. The average salary will be over $100k and mostly local hires.This would be a huge coupe. Maybe not as sexy as a Chiquita HQ relocation, but a lot of high paying jobs for local folks from a global firm. Nomura has their main offices in New York but also Tokyo, Hong Kong and London.

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Interesting, I had heard rumors that Nomura was going to exit the US market all together. Obviously it seems they wouldn't sign a lease/hire people if they were fully committed to pulling out. I assume any incentives would be structured where they wouldn't get paid unless they kept the jobs here for 10 years.

Considering that 100% of their US employees are in NYC, this is a pretty big coup for Charlotte. My guess is this is really the firing of 200-300 NYC people, and rehiring cheaper Charlotte talent, with some mgmt moving down, but as the article alludes to, even Investment Banking and Trading back-office and middle-office jobs are really high paying positions. It would be nice if this would lead to additional companies moving similar operations here. HSBC, SocGen, BNP Paribas, RBC Capital Markets, and BarCap all have most of these types of jobs in Manhattan, and could/should consider cheaper places for their back-offices.

The HSBC office mentioned above is interesting, because its actually a client facing banker office. As the Carolinas grow, I suspect we will see more and more major financial firms have regional offices here to serve their cleints in the area.

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^^^

It would be nice if this would lead to additional companies moving similar operations here. HSBC, SocGen, BNP Paribas, RBC Capital Markets, and BarCap all have most of these types of jobs in Manhattan, and could/should consider cheaper places for their back-offices.

I wouldn't hold your breath too much on the French banks.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Maybe someone has already mentioned this, but I noticed there are signed plastered to the BB&T College St groundfloor advertising "available retail space" all along the block. There appeared to be some sort of rendering (I couldn't see closely enough to tell if they would be willing to remove those concrete planters.... I hope so).

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From the New Mexico Business Journal.

Advanced Composite Structures is relocating its headquarters from Albuquerque to Charlotte, N.C.

The company, which will continue to operate a factory in Albuquerque, will open a 32,000-square-foot facility in Charlotte on Jan. 16 with 40 employees, said President and CEO Tom Pherson.

ACS, which makes thermoplastic air cargo boxes, wanted its headquarters located next to a seaport for shipping to global markets.

“It costs more to ship containers from Albuquerque to Houston for export than it does to ship by sea from Charlotte,” Pherson said. “The cost of transportation was affecting our operations, so we chose to relocate our final assembly and logistics engineering business.”

Very cool and all, but I never considered Charlotte that close to a seaport. I guess relative to Albuquerque we are.

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From the New Mexico Business Journal.

Advanced Composite Structures is relocating its headquarters from Albuquerque to Charlotte, N.C....

Very cool and all, but I never considered Charlotte that close to a seaport. I guess relative to Albuquerque we are.

I hate to be the skeptical guy but could this be a case of the NM Business Journal confusing Charleston and Charlotte? A quick google search does show that ACS is hiring lots of folks in North Charleston (although they look like production jobs).

I also would have thought the Chamber would have been all over another corp hq announcement at the end of the year.

Edited by kermit
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A Dec 9th article in the Charleston Post and Courier states:

Shipping lag times to and from Albuquerque, N.M, were hamstringing Cargo Composites' growing international business, so company president Tom Pherson went in search of a new headquarters for his airplane container manufacturer

Owned by Advance Composite Structures LLC, Cargo Composites is renovating 32,000 square feet of space in Cainhoy Park off Clements Ferry Road and plans to open by the middle of January. The facility will house corporate offices as well as the company's engineering, aluminum machining, final assembly and shipping functions

I would think this means that Charleston got the headquarters...

Edited by Urbanity
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I can't find a 4th Ward thread, and I'm not sure this has been noted yet, but looks like an "artisan bakery and coffee house" is about to open in the old Gerard Tire building on North Graham. Pretty cool building for such a venture. I hope it takes off....and I hope they have room for a reading room.

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  • 4 weeks later...

An interesting twist to the PNC acquisition of RBC: PNC is now hiring in Charlotte for their Asset Management Group.No details about how many jobs. Nevertheless its good to see other banks continue to soak up some of our surplus banking talent.

The brief discussion is in the second portion of this CBJ article: http://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/print-edition/2012/01/27/bofa-halts-refi-operation-says-move.html?page=all

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