Chase CEO says presence in North Carolina is going to get bigger – ‘we’re ambitious’

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North Carolina’s recent wins in economic development across a broad swath of industries – from biotech to electric vehicles – comes as no surprise to JPMorgan Chase’s top executive Jamie Dimon. After all, his own company continues to expand its presence in the state. Plus, he’s very familiar with the Triangle area.

“I had two daughters who went to Duke and had a great time there,” Dimon told Sarah Krueger, WRAL-TV’s Durham Reporter, during a visit to the Triangle on Thursday. “[I] just spent some time at UNC, which I think is also a fabulous place.”

In four years since announcing expansion plans to North Carolina, the banking giant has opened 30 branches. And more are coming, Dimon said.

“[W]e’re ambitious,” he said. “We want to think about the next round of things we want to get done.”

Why here?

“Obviously, North Carolina is a great state. The Triangle is one of the fastest growing parts of America,” he explained. “It has innovation and growth and universities and companies. It’s got everything you need.”

Chase says it has some 700 employees in the state. Plus a corporate spokesperson noted that Chase has a “back office” support center in Cary.

NORTH CAROLINA’S APPEAL

North Carolina’s development victories include a Google engineering hub in Durham, a new semiconductor plant from Durham-based Wolfspeed, an aerospace plant for Boom Supersonic, a new Apple campus, a Toyota battery plant and an electric vehicle plant from Vietnam-based VinFast. It’s been voted the most business-friendly state by CNBC.

Those wins are not a shock to Dimon.

“Universities have always been, are the core of that,” he said about the state’s appeal. “Then you go back to what they call the Triangle. In  Boston [there’s] 128 tech road where a lot of companies were born, it’s because of MIT and Harvard and tons of other universities there.”

Dimon also noted other North Carolina strengths.

“Here you have a government that wants business,” he said. “The universities here they graduate healthcare professionals, we’ve got great hospitals. They graduate tech professionals.

“You’re going to bring in Google. And once you have a company like Google come in, someone else is going to look at it and say they have such great graduates coming out in the workforce in terms of technology and AI and people just start building. Development really works.”

WRAL TechWire Photo

Original Article Source: WRAL TechWire