General Electric Co (GE) chief executive Jeff Immelt is pledging to spend US$50 million on a series of initiatives in Boston, including US$25 million on government schools, as his company prepares to move its headquarters to the city.
The announcement came as Immelt joined Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh on Monday to unveil more details about the company’s decision to move its headquarters from Fairfield, Connecticut.
GE is to occupy two buildings and build a third in Boston’s Fort Point neighborhood.
Photo: AP
Immelt said the move would create about 4,000 temporary and permanent jobs.
Immelt said the company plans to move into temporary offices in August and ultimately bring 800 new workers to the area.
He predicted the move would inject more than US$1 billion into the local economy.
Photo: AP
Immelt said the company was drawn to Boston because of its determination not to lose out to Silicon Valley on the growth of the “industrial Internet.”
“The other thing I like about Boston is that you have a chip on your shoulder,” Immelt said. “I love that.”
Baker said GE and Massachusetts are a good match.
He said that 40 percent of workers in the state are part of the “innovation economy.”
Baker predicted that other companies would relocate to the Boston area in part because GE is doing so.
As part of the US$50 million package unveiled on Monday, Immelt said GE would fund a career laboratory to help prepare students for jobs using advanced manufacturing technology.
The company would also spend US$15 million on community health centers and US$10 million to expand diversity in the healthcare, science and technology fields.
Protesters gathered outside the press conference to highlight the millions of US dollars in tax breaks and public incentives, including the prospect of free rent on city-owned land, used to lure the company to Boston.
Susan Strelec, a 70-year-old protester from the city’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood, braved snow, wind and icy sidewalks in front of the high-rise office building where the press conference was being held to voice her concerns.
Strelec said the city and state should be more focused on improving schools, shelters for homeless people and fixing public transportation rather than offering sweet deals to big corporations.
“I hate injustice. I hate corporate greed. I hate stupidity,” said Strelec, a member of the Massachusetts Alliance of HUD Tenants, one of the groups protesting the agreement.
Walsh defended the deal, saying it would end up generating more tax revenue by renovating the two warehouses on city-owned land, rather than letting them remain as they are for the next 10 to 15 years.
Walsh also pointed to the US$25 million pledge to Boston schools by GE, which he said was a direct result of the deal.
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
Intel Corp has named Tasha Chuang (莊蓓瑜) to lead Intel Taiwan in a bid to reinforce relations between the company and its Taiwanese partners. The appointment of Chuang as general manager for Intel Taiwan takes effect on Thursday, the firm said in a statement yesterday. Chuang is to lead her team in Taiwan to pursue product development and sales growth in an effort to reinforce the company’s ties with its partners and clients, Intel said. Chuang was previously in charge of managing Intel’s ties with leading Taiwanese PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which included helping Asustek strengthen its global businesses, the company
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) forecast that its wafer shipments this quarter would grow up to 7 percent sequentially and the factory utilization rate would rise to 75 percent, indicating that customers did not alter their ordering behavior due to the US President Donald Trump’s capricious US tariff policies. However, the uncertainty about US tariffs has weighed on the chipmaker’s business visibility for the second half of this year, UMC chief financial officer Liu Chi-tung (劉啟東) said at an online earnings conference yesterday. “Although the escalating trade tensions and global tariff policies have increased uncertainty in the semiconductor industry, we have not
Taiwanese suppliers to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) are expected to follow the contract chipmaker’s step to invest in the US, but their relocation may be seven to eight years away, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. When asked by opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) in the legislature about growing concerns that TSMC’s huge investments in the US will prompt its suppliers to follow suit, Kuo said based on the chipmaker’s current limited production volume, it is unlikely to lead its supply chain to go there for now. “Unless TSMC completes its planned six
RSS