CEO Says GE Will Always Have 'Big Presence' In CT As HQ Search Continues: Report

While it remains to be seen where General Electric will call home, CEO Jeff Immelt said the company will “always have a big presence in Connecticut” even as it continues to search for a potential new headquarters, according to the Connecticut Post.

The Post reports Immelt made the comments while accepting the Walter H. Wheeler Jr. Business Leadership Award at the Stamford-based Business Council of Fairfield County dinner on Tuesday night.

GE has been weighing its options about relocating from its Fairfield headquarters ever since Immelt expressed frustration over Connecticut’s new business tax increases in June and announced they would begin a search for a new home. Immelt has said the company will make a decision about possible relocation by the end by the end of the year.

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In addition to its Fairfield headquarters, GE has other work sites in Stamford and Norwalk where it has been divesting the vast bulk of GE Capital, and other areas, according to the Post.

Potential suitors have been lining up ever since Immelt made the announcement in June and Connecticut officials have also been fighting to keep GE in the state.

The Atlanta Business Chronicle recently reported that Georgia is out of the running and said that GE apparently will stay in the Northeast —-either in Fairfield, the Greater New York City area or Boston.

Georgia officials had been vocal about their efforts to lure GE out of Fairfield. Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed recently told Bloomberg News reporters that they will be “offering whatever is reasonable to get it done if we have the opportunity.”

The Hartford Courant reported on Monday that a GE spokesman said the company had nothing new to report about its search process and declined to reveal which states and cities are finalists, or to name which states have been ruled out.

In his comments on Tuesday night, Immelt said, that GE is a company that “doesn’t look for special deals, but we need an ecosystem that’s forward-looking, that’s future-looking; that’s willing to fight hard to be competitive and enduring for the future,” according to the Post.

Immelt also that’s “why we’re looking not just here but other places for where the eventual headquarters of the company will be. We will always have a big presence in Connecticut, but we think the power of an ecosystem is important,” according to the Post.

Read more at the Connecticut Post here.