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Source: NCR moving to Georgia

An announcement about the company’s future is expected as soon as today.

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By Steve Bennish, Bill Hershey and Tom Gnau
Staff Writers Updated 2:15 AM Tuesday, June 2, 2009

DAYTON — NCR Corp. will move its corporate headquarters and 1,250 jobs to Duluth, Ga., from Dayton, an NCR source has told the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

“This is a big, big deal,” said the source, whom the Journal Constitution, a sister newspaper of the Dayton Daily News, did not name Monday night, June 1.

Word of the move came a few hours after Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, in a letter to NCR Chairman and CEO Bill Nuti, offered NCR $31.1 million to continue its operations in Ohio. Full text of Ohio's offer

The source told the AJC the $31.1 million offer from Strickland was too late.

“We did not receive that offer until this evening... it pales in comparison to what Georgia is giving,” said the source.

Strickland and state Sen. John Husted, R-Kettering, said an announcement is expected today.

“And since they have not asked Ohio to compete for that operation, I don’t expect it to be good news,” Husted said.

Local officials have been concerned for days that NCR leaders would announce a move of operations from Dayton to Georgia.

Jeff Dudash, an NCR spokesman, said Monday night, June 1, “We’re not going to respond tonight.”

Strickland’s letter, dated June 1 to Nuti, offered the money in the form of grants and tax credits. The letter followed a telephone conversation between the two late Monday afternoon.

His administration began reaching out NCR on Thursday, May 28. On Friday, Strickland’s office began trying to set up a call between the governor and Nuti.

“This letter is to take one last opportunity to urge you to continue your operations in Ohio,” Strickland wrote in the letter that was provided to the Dayton Daily News.

“NCR’s 125-year history in Ohio is rooted in the Dayton region’s skilled workforce. Since 1884, the people of this region have served the company with dedication and loyalty. In turn, NCR’s success has helped Ohio grow and prosper.”

The governor’s spokeswoman, Amanda Wurst, said Monday night that “the governor believes an announcement may be imminent based on the conversation.”

Nuti, she said, indicated that NCR has been looking at Georgia and considering relocating for some time. During their conversation, she noted, the governor stressed a strong relationship between NCR and Ohio and the long history the company had in Ohio.

“Mr. Nuti gave a strong indication that he had been looking at Georgia,” Wurst said.

Ohio’s incentives include tax credits and grants. For its part, NCR would keep operations in the city of Dayton and retain 1,300 full-time jobs.

The average hourly wage rate for the retained positions is $40.87, exclusive of benefits, according to the governor’s offer letter, which included assumptions that Ohio is “in competition with the state of Georgia for NCR’s proposed project.”

“I want to hear the announcement before I talk about NCR in the past tense,” Husted said Monday night. “We have been working for nine months on how we can help NCR grow in the Dayton area. They have not entertained any of our overtures.”

Husted said that though there are rumors that NCR would be moving all of its operations to Atlanta, John Haseley, the governor’s chief of staff, did not know whether that was true.

“It has grown increasingly more apparent that they (NCR) didn’t have any interest in expanding in the Dayton area,” Husted said.

For companies serving the troubled financial services industry — firms like Dayton’s NCR Corp. — job cuts and consolidations are these days too often an unfortunate reality.

Local concerns about NCR’s shrinking Dayton presence have grown since 2006, when NCR’s board allowed Nuti to continue living in New York, and December 2007, when the company announced plans to open executive offices in Manhattan’s World Trade Center. An expansion in Georgia announced last October only intensified concerns.

Diebold Inc., a North Canton, Ohio-based maker of ATMs and an NCR competitor, is weathering the same tough economy NCR faces. Last month, publicly traded Diebold reported first-quarter revenue of $663.2 million, down 4 percent from first quarter of 2008.

Diebold has had to cut jobs, acknowledged Mike Jacobsen, a Diebold spokesman. In 2008, the company announced planned cuts of 800 positions in North America, Brazil and Western Europe. About 50 of those cuts were to be in Ohio.

Gil Luria, an analyst for Wedbush Morgan Securities who follows NCR, said it’s not unusual to see firms that serve the financial services industry downsize in this economy. But he called moving a company’s headquarters “an extreme measure.”

“That’s a pretty dramatic measure, but ... it could have the potential to create very dramatic savings,” Luria said.

The savings would come through not hiring as many people in the new location, Luria added. NCR has about 1,300 employees in Dayton and 23,000 worldwide.

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when Ohio passed legislation that strained relations with gay and lesbian people NCR publicly stated that that kind of behavior was a distraction for them to recruit top talent to their Dayton offices, just one more reason why NCR is leaving town.

Mike
3:30 PM, 7/15/2009

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Donald Clark loves little boys!

Donald Clark Is A Terrorist
9:50 PM, 7/2/2009

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hello, this is kumar gaurav living in delhi, i want part time business if you have any part time job for me pls. write me or call me 9871493268

kumar gaurav
1:43 AM, 7/1/2009

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The said part is the comment to the effect that officials have been concerned for a few days. This has been planned for years and did anyone of the high paid, lofty city or county officials ever ask NCR plan and simply, what the heck do you want? Maybe their board of directors would have been better to work with than the guy in NY. He Will come down off his high throne. Dayton, Good Bye.

Gaylon G . Brown
2:33 PM, 6/11/2009

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With all this NCR bashing its ludacrous, In the southern part of Georgia,two tire manufacturers based in Ohio shuddered a building the same building in a 23 year period Bridgestone Firestone in 1986 and Cooper in 2009, thanks in 1986 goes to Akron,and thanks to Findlay in 2009,I don't sympathise with people in Dayton,as decisions made in Akron and Findlay has hurt the economy in this area Kudos to NCR for making that Georgia move.

donald clark
6:55 PM, 6/7/2009

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