CARY, N.C. — ABB (NYSE: ABB), an international high-tech company focused on power and automation products, will move its North American headquarters to Cary from Connecticut, the company said Tuesday.
Cary prevailed in a selection process involving four other cities. ABB, which already has operations and several hundred employees in the Triangle area, is an international conglomerate based in Switzerland. It has more than 100,000 employees.
Some 100 jobs are expected to be involved initially in the move to Cary from Norwalk, Conn., according to a company spokesperson.
The headquarters will be based in Cary’s Regency Park in a building ABB leased in 2008.
Enrique Santacana, chief executive officer of ABB North America, is no stranger to the Triangle. He maintains a home in North Raleigh and worked at ABB in the Triangle for several years before taking over as CEO. Santacana also is a graduate of Duke University.
ABB cited several reasons for picking Cary as the headquarters site:
• Proximity to “significant customer and employee bases”
• Favorable real estate market. “Commercial office property rates in Cary are close to 50 percent lower than in Norwalk,” the company said.
• Business climate in the Triangle
“ABB already has a significant and growing presence in the Raleigh-Cary metropolitan area in terms of proximity to some of our key customers, our employee base, and various divisional headquarters,” Santacana said in a statement.
“After a thorough analysis of economic trends, commercial property rates and other cities, it became clear that there were many advantages in moving our headquarters to Cary,” he added.
The North American headquarters oversees some 15,000 employees and operations in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America.
