| Company | PaineWebber (Now UBS Americas) |
| Deal closed | 11/13/1997 |
| Project Site | 1285, 1251 6th Ave, 120, 140 Broadway, 200 Park Ave, 590 Madison Ave, 135 W 50th St, 51 W 52nd, Manhattan |
| Competing Sites | Weehawken, N.J. |
| Maximum Subsidy | $14,468,500 |
|
$13 million |
|
$1.466
million
($1,500/added employee/year) |
| Type(s) of City benefits |
Sales Tax Exemptions for retention -
$10,450,000 Sales Tax Exemptions for growth - $1,466,000 Energy savings - $2,550,000 |
| Benefits from New York State | ? |
| Benefits Distributed to Date (according to LL69 Report FY 2002) | $6,363,000 |
| Promised Job Retention | 2,781 |
| Projected job growth | 474 |
| Total Jobs | 3,255 |
| Jobs Reported in LL69 Report FY 2002 | 1,602 |
| Layoffs | ? |
| Length of Contract | 20 years |
| Project Purpose | This deal was offered to prevent Paine Webber from relocating to Weehawken, New Jersey. |
| Clawbacks? | $1.5 million in sales tax exemptions is offered on the condition that PaineWebber hire 474 new employees during the course of its lease. |
| Background/Since then |
On August 21, 2001, the IDA approved an amendment to this project agreement that waived the Agency's headquarters requirement and converted the deal from a bond structure to a straight-lease structure. The company's new corporate parent would be headquartered outside New York, but Paine Webber's headquarters would still be required to remain in the city. A February 2003 amendment to the project agreement proposed relaxing the retention requirements but increasing the base employment level from 2,781 to 4,318. It is unclear how the low job numbers listed in the LL69 report relate to this change. |
| Corporate Notes | PaineWebber bought brokerage firm Kidder Peabody in 1994, laying off many Kidder Peabody employees, barely a year after Kidder received a $31 million job retention package (see separate entry). |
| Comments | "Critics of corporate retention packages . . . have argued that firms like PaineWebber have no choice but to keep most of their operations here and are using relocation threats to extract lucrative concessions from elected officials" (Daily News, 5/15/96). |
| A note on sources -- Information in this deal comes from GJNY's examination of project agreements obtained through Freedom of Information Law requests, as well as news reports, minutes and notes taken at board meetings, and communication with our allies. The entries are a work in progress. For more information about the documentation behind GJNY's database, or to let us know about any developments that are not yet reflected here, please contact us at gjny@ctj.org or (212) 414-9394. | |
| Date last updated: 04/8/03 | |