An early hint that GE might move to Boston?

Tom Paine

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Perhaps this announcement by GE, as described by NJ.com on June 2, 2014, was a precursor for GE's announcement this week that it was picking up its toys and moving its headquarters from Fairfield, CT to Boston. Perhaps the move was already in the early planning stages. Major corporate moves of that size usually require a five year planning horizon.

GE subsidiary to move jobs from Princeton, Piscataway


"GE Healthcare Life Sciences confirmed today its plan to consolidate operations near Boston, which will impact many of its 400 New Jersey employees — including job loss for some.
The facilities that will be closed next year are in Princeton and Piscataway. Operations in Livingston and South Plainfield will be unaffected by the plan, according to a company spokesman.
Of the Princeton and Piscataway employees, some will be invited to relocate to the Massachusetts facility, some may end up working remotely, while the third category would be laid off."

Though I feel little sympathy for Connecticut, whose inflexibility helped lose GE according to reports, knowing a bit about how the power structure works in that state. However, Connecticut apparently offered considerable incentives to Comcast in order for NBC Sports to relocate there three years ago.

Coincidentally, GE's move will bring it closer to PTC, headquartered in Needham, which is GE's primary IoT partner, with a significant contribution from its Exton-based ThingWorx unit. The geographical proximity doesn't mean anything in particular, but GE could snap up PTC in a minute if it wanted to.

Note: PTC announced another acquistion today to support ThingWorx and its IoT strategy.