Another week, another big banking jobs announcement for Charlotte. This time it came from the nation’s largest bank by assets, JPMorgan Chase, which said it’s adding 400 jobs locally over the next couple of years in its commercial and investment bank, private bank, and consumer bank. The Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter’s Ashley Fahey joined WFAE’s Marshall Terry for our segment BizWorthy.
Marshall Terry: Charlotte seems to be on a hot streak right now, landing these banking jobs. Am I right in thinking that?
Ashley Fahey: It feels like every week we're hearing about either a new-to-market company or one like JPMorgan Chase, which has been in Charlotte now for a few years. What I hear from the market, we could see even more in the future. So stay tuned, I guess.
Terry: JPMorgan Chase says these 400 jobs it’s adding will be based in SouthPark, where it already has 600 employees. Citigroup recently opened an office in Ballantyne. Is uptown’s reign as the city’s banking center over?
Fahey: I don't think so. We are hearing about Capital Group and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., which, of course, they're bringing 2,000 jobs to Charlotte eventually.
They're both kind of circling the uptown market. And of course, American Express, they're putting an office in uptown as well. I think it's just a reflection that companies want different things. JPMorganChase has liked being in SouthPark. I think it just shows that companies are looking for different things in their space decisions and right now the market's really tight. In some cases, it's where you can find space.
Terry: Sticking with businesses expanding or coming to the Charlotte area, it looks like the region is getting a new Fortune 500 headquarters. Which one?
Fahey: It's Sunbelt Rentals Holdings, which is one of the country's biggest providers of rental equipment for construction and industrial uses. We've all probably at least seen the logo, either on a billboard or driving down the highway. The company has been based in London, actually, but recently reclassified its headquarters to Fort Mill in March. My colleague Tony Mecia did sort of the math on it, and it would easily have fit in last year's Fortune 500 list. I guess you could technically say that Charlotte has another Fortune 500 headquarters in the region.
Terry: Plans are underway for Charlotte’s first mass-timber office building. What is that?
Fahey: This has been a recent trend, kind of in the building and construction industries. A lot of building codes have been rewritten to allow taller mass-timber buildings. Historically, there's been a lot of concerns about the safety and fire hazards related to wood construction, especially when you go above five or six stories. But it's becoming a much more dominant trend in the development industry, partly for sustainability reasons. It's certainly for cost savings compared to concrete and steel.
Terry: But it is wood. Is that safe?
Fahey: A lot of the engineered wood products that are used in the building of these structures, in the event of a fire, would char on the outside, which would kind of insulate the building. These wood products are being engineered in a way that they're a little bit more safe, and the fire is not going to spread as quickly as we might think.
Terry: Let’s end on an update to a story we talked about last week. According to a Bloomberg report, the CEO of United Airlines had expressed interest in merging with American, which is Charlotte’s largest carrier. American has now said it’s not interested. Why?
Fahey: They cited things like a combination with United would be negative for competition and for consumers. It also notably comes at a time when a bipartisan group of senators publicly expressed concern about the potential of an American-United merger, also citing concerns around competition, what impact it could have on fares, routes, and workers — The Wall Street Journal reported that earlier this week. So it seems like there's a lot of concern around competition. It doesn't seem likely that this merger will happen, but some in the industry have theorized that this discussion is really a trial balloon for United, who maybe wants to merge with another carrier.
Support for BizWorthy comes from the law office of Robertson & Associates.
