Signs Point to GE's Exit: Reports

As Fairfield and the rest of the state anxiously awaits General Electric’s final word on whether or not it will stay in its Connecticut headquarters, speculation is ramping up big time and recent signs point to the company’s exit.

GE is expected to announce its decision by the end of the month and while its current Fairfield headquarters has been reported as a finalist, a Boston TV station says it’s now down to Boston and New York.

WCVB 5, an ABC station in Boston, reports that city’s Seaport District is becoming defined by its “innovation economy” and would be ideal for GE as it transforms its portfolio into a premier digital industrial company.

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Boston Mayor Martin Walsh said he “really can’t, really can’t talk about any particulars here,” when asked by a NewsCenter 5 reporter how close he was to “closing the deal with GE?”

Walsh also added that Boston is “a great city, it’s a wonderful city. I think anybody would love our city and what we have to offer.”

Scott Kirsner, of Beta Boston/The Boston Globe, writes why he thinks GE will soon announce it’s moving to Boston, touting the other “forward-looking Boston companies like Amazon Robotics, iRobot, Formlabs, LogMeIn, and Gridco Systems.”

Kirsner also believes the battle for GE will be between Boston and New York. He also noted that Bloomberg Business recently named Massachusetts as the most innovative in the country. Connecticut was fifth on the list and New York was No. 17.

The Connecticut Post reports that while taxes have been a central issue for GE’s potential desire to relocate, the headquarters itself may be a bigger issue.

When CEO Jeff Immelt first notified employees last June that the company would begin exploring to “look into the company’s options to relocate corporate HQ to another state with a more pro-business environment,” states like Indiana and Florida immediately jumped into fray.

But if GE decides to relocate and stay in the northeast, it raises the possibility “that costs may only play one role, and that the company leaning toward the kind of centralized, walkable communities that are in fashion now and away from an isolated, suburban office park like its current space,” according to Hugh Bailey of the Connecticut Post.

Immelt recently said in Stamford after receiving a business leadership award 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 said 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.”

Read more at the Connecticut Post here.