GOED offers incentives to eBay, Verisys

The Governor's Office of Economic Development Board has offered incentives to Verisys Corp. and eBay Inc. in an attempt to nourish the information technology segment of Utah's economy.

Neither company has determined whether it take its incentive — both were approved Thursday — and move parts of their companies to Utah. The incentives are for growth that would create a total of perhaps 300 full-time jobs in South Jordan.

Online auction company eBay, headquartered in San Jose, Calif., has customer service and data center operations in Utah and employs more than 1,000. The company is considering hiring up to 200 new customer service employees.

The lure approved Thursday is a $1.7 million tax incentive over 10 years for the positions that pay more than 25 percent above the Salt Lake County average. EBay would spend $40 million in the next decade on capital investments, pay $70 million in wages and generate $6.8 million in tax revenues.

The company announced last week that it will consolidate North American customer service offices by closing its Vancouver, British Columbia, office by Sept. 30, and adding employees to its South Jordan office.

Verisys aggregates and electronically publishes near-real-time data on health-care providers, medical goods, vendors and health services.

Verisys management is considering moving operations and corporate headquarters from Virginia to Utah beginning in 2010. The state would give the company $835,000 in a tax incentive over seven years, starting the second year of operations in Utah. The average salary would be in excess of $51,000, which is 25 percent above the average Salt Lake County wage, including health benefits.

Verisys would invest about $10 million in Utah in a headquarters facility in South Jordan and hire up to 100 new full-time positions. The company would pay $18 million in new state wages and generate $4 million in state tax revenue during the seven years of the incentive, GOED spokesman Michael Sullivan said.

GOED executive director Jason Perry said he wants more company headquarters to be relocated to Utah. "It's where the company puts down its roots and the first place they look when they want to expand," he said. "The headquarters, oftentimes it brings high-paying jobs, the senior management jobs."

Also, suppliers often follow companies when they relocate, he said.

Utah's economy has plenty of entrepreneurs and small business. As they grow, they need to have a pool of expertise from large companies to draw upon. "It's very important that we're seen as a place for high-level management to locate," Perry said.

Both companies were told that the GOED board OK'd the incentives. Spokesmen for the companies did not return calls to the Deseret News on Thursday.

E-MAIL: lhancock@desnews.com