Company VNU USA
Date Announced 6/14/1999
Site 770 Broadway
Total Subsidy $10.6 million

Amount tied to job creation

???
Promised Job Creation 1,800
Promised Job Retention 1,200
Length of Contract 15 years
Competing Sites ???
Conditions none
Notes Publisher and audience-measurement company VNU won $10.6 million in city and state sales tax exemptions and cheap electricity and promised to increase its workforce of 1,200  by 50% over 15 years.
Corporate Notes VNU USA owns the Nielsen TV audience ratings service and a majority stake in internet audience-measurement service NetRatings. The company,  subsidiary of Dutch publisher VNU N.V., also puts out trade magazines, such as Billboard and Adweek, as well as managing corporate conferences and events.
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