| Company | Citicorp (multiple recipient) |
| Date Announced | |
| Site | Long Island City, Queens |
| Total Subsidy | $90 million |
|
??? |
| Promised Job Creation | ??? |
| Promised Job Retention | ??? |
| Length of Contract | ??? |
| Competing Sites | none |
| Conditions | none |
| Notes | Citicorp's 50-story
green glass tower in Long Island City (just across the East River from its
midtown headquarters) is the area's most visible landmark, and it was
made possible in part with subsidies from the people of New York. The
government granted Citicorp $90 million in tax abatements and other
incentives in 1989, and the banking behemoth relocated some 3,500 jobs
from elsewhere in the city in exchange for the subsidies. Since then,
however, Citicorp has had several rounds of layoffs and relocations,
including a massive cut of more than 1,000 New York City jobs in 1998 as
part of a global layoff of over 10,000 employees when Citicorp merged with
insurance and financial services giant Travelers to form Citigroup. (In
1996, Citicorp had moved 300 jobs, some from Florida and some from New
York City, to Amherst, N.Y., a suburb of Buffalo, in exchange for sales
tax breaks of nearly $200,000.) When Citigroup announced layoffs in 1998,
Deputy Mayor Randy Levine told the Daily News that Citigroup execs
"fully intend to comply with the various [job] retention agreements
they have with the city, and they also understand that, if they don’t
comply, they will have to consent to forgoing various
benefits"(12/16/98). Because the terms of the $90 million tax break
are not public, however, there is no way citizens or even members of City
Council can be sure that Citigroup is living up to its commitments. In April 2001, Citicorp announced that several hundred jobs would be cut in the corporate and investment banking operations of its Salomon Smith Barney unit. |
| Corporate Notes | Banking and financial services giant Citicorp merged with insurance and investment banking giant Travelers to form Citigroup in 1998. Travelers had benefited from two rounds of subsidies (see separate entry). |
| Critics | |
| A
note on sources -- or why many of these profiles appear incomplete.
They are. Good Jobs New York compiled the numbers in these profiles from
press releases and news accounts of the deals. Unfortunately, more
detailed information on these subsidies is very difficult to obtain --
even though it should be readily available to the public. In many cases,
neither the company nor the city nor state released certain information,
particularly the terms of the agreement, i.e., the conditions which the
company had to meet in order to receive the subsidy. It should also be
noted that the value of the subsidy may not end up being equal to the
value estimated at the time of the agreement. And it should not be assumed
that the actual number of jobs retained and created will be the same as
the numbers predicted.
Because the public deserves easy access to information about how taxpayer dollars are being spent, Good Jobs New York will update these profiles as we uncover more information. Good Jobs New York - May 25, 2001 |
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