Company New York Mercantile Exchange
Date Announced 8/4/1994
Site Battery Park City
Total Subsidy $183.9 million

Amount tied to job creation

???
Promised Job Creation ???
Promised Job Retention 8,100
Length of Contract 15 years
Competing Sites New Jersey
Conditions none
Notes Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and then-Gov. Mario Cuomo put together a package of incentives to help the commodities exchange build a $220 million trading complex on state-owned land at Battery Park City in lower Manhattan. The package included $129 million in outright grants plus sales tax exemptions and other subsidies. According to the Economic Development Corp., 8,100 jobs were retained as a result of the deal, but there were "no growth numbers projected" for new jobs. The total announced value of the package does not take into account the fact that the state-controlled Battery Park City Authority would charge the Mercantile Exchange a rent of only $1 million per year, or about $16.5 million less than the market rate, according to real estate brokers (New York Times, 4/4/99). The mayor celebrated the deal with the observation that it is "an extremely important signal that New York City is the place to be if you're a member of the global financial industry" (Newsday, 8/5/94).



In this deal, the Mercantile Exchange received $22,700 per worker retained, according to a New York Times analysis (4/25/97)
Corporate Notes
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