Credit Suisse sells some RTP land

tool name

tool name

Credit Suisse sells RTP land

Investment banking giant Credit Suisse has sold back about half its land in Research Triangle Park after concluding that it has ample room for future expansion in its current facility.

"We can probably add another 450 people in the building," said Jim Captain, site executive for the Switzerland-based company. Credit Suisse currently has 950 full-time workers -- a combination of employees and contractors -- in its 211,000 square foot building in RTP.

The company has sold back about 35 acres of undeveloped land plus designated "natural space" to the Research Triangle Foundation, which runs RTP. The selling price of roughly $3.2 million is the same price, on a per-acre basis, that Credit Suisse originally paid.

Credit Suisse to hire 300

Investment banking giant Credit Suisse plans to hire about 300 additional workers in Research Triangle Park next year to support its growing business.

"Raleigh is an integral part of our growth strategy, because of the labor force that is available to us here," said Jim Captain, site executive for the Swiss company.

The company's expansion plans will boost its local work force by nearly a third. It currently has about 1,000 full-time workers, both employees and contractors.

RTP's vacancy rate hits 27%

When cell phone maker Sony Ericsson announced last week that it will shut down its Research Triangle Park operations within a year, it became the latest high-profile tenant to reduce its presence in the region's signature industrial park.

Sony Ericsson's departure was not entirely unexpected - the company has struggled for years to compete in the global handset market - but the news only added to the pain being inflicted on RTP by this recession.

The office vacancy rate in RTP, including available sublease space, stood at 27.2percent in the third quarter, according to the Raleigh research firm Grubb & Ellis/Thomas Linderman Graham. That's up 34 percent from the same period last year and the highest it has been since the tech bubble burst, which caused RTP's vacancy rate to top 30 percent in 2003.

Credit Suisse hiring 300 workers

Investment banking giant Credit Suisse said today that it plans to hire about 300 new workers at its Research Triangle Park facility, a move that will expand its work force by nearly one-third.

"We're seeing positive growth at Credit Suisse," said Michael Misner, a spokesman for the Swiss-based firm. "We are a very well-capitalized bank. The [economic] crisis created opportunities based on our strong capital base."

Hiring is beginning immediately for information technology, operations, accounting and administrative positions, said Misner. He declined to disclose salaries but said that Credit Suisse pays above-average wages.

Credit Suisse worth the investment, Wake board says

Wake commissioners approved a $625,076 payout Monday to Credit Suisse under a 2004 corporate incentives deal to induce the banking giant to build a Global Business Center in the county.

A report presented to the commissioners said Credit Suisse had lived up to the terms laid out five years ago, chiefly creating more than 600 new jobs and investing more than $100 million into its local facilities. The company could qualify for similar payments in each of the next six years.

Several on the elected board took pains to make clear their view that the jobs and the tax revenue generated by Credit Suisse more than equal the amount of public investment in the project. Positions at its Wake location provide an average salary of $70,000, according to the report given commissioners. It also is a strong supporter of the arts in the county, board members said.