500 new jobs with a base salary north of $100,000 is a good thing. Considering the jobs that Bayer had already moved to St. Louis from the RTP in NC, that's nearly 1,000 new jobs in STL since Bayer took over Monsanto just within the last year. Not bad considering how most acquisitions go for the St. Louis region.
This represents a capital investment of about $164 million for Bayer in St. Louis.
Monsanto said it employed 4,100 in St. Louis in 2016 when the merger with Bayer was announced. According to Bayer, there are currently 4,400 jobs in St. Louis, my guess is those initial 300 new jobs came from RTP after they vacated their space when the deal with BASF was done.
I would imagine none of these jobs are coming from Pittsburgh. Totally different business units, most of those Pittsburgh jobs probably ended up in Whippany, NJ where Bayer maintains it's actual North American Headquarters. St. Louis is the NA HQ for the Crop Science business, which was originally headquartered in RTP.
Bayer put out this statement after the closure of their related operations in Pittsburgh:
“For more than 150 years, Bayer has stood for quality and trust, making innovative products in health and nutrition that improve lives and make a contribution to society. Our employees around the globe work every day to find solutions to a growing and aging population.
“With the acquisition of Monsanto completed last year, we doubled the size of our business in the United States to more than $16 billion in sales, and we now employ more than 20,000 people in 300 locations across the country.
“As part of the work to bring our companies together and significantly improve productivity and profitability, Bayer announced in November 2018 that it will reduce 12,000 jobs globally by 2021.
“In the United States, we are beginning to implement this by consolidating administrative functions to best support our agriculture business, which is headquartered in St. Louis, and our healthcare businesses, which are headquartered in Whippany, N.J.
“As a first step toward this consolidation, we are announcing that we will be closing our administrative site in Robinson, PA, and informed employees at this site today. This decision will impact 569 positions and 96 contractors.
“This is certainly a difficult decision given the impact it will have on our colleagues and their families, and the important role the site has played in our company’s history. We have an extremely talented workforce in Robinson and a proud and rich history. We thank our colleagues for their hard work and dedication over the years.
“We will transition the site closing in a thoughtful, orderly manner over a two-year period to provide ample time for employees and operations to transition smoothly and to ensure that we continue to serve our customers and businesses effectively. We are exploring options where key work at the site will be performed.
“We have the utmost appreciation for the employees and their families affected by this decision, and we are committed to treating each employee with dignity and respect throughout this process. We know that changes like this can be uneasy and even a bit stressful for our employees – and for the community. That is why we will honor our commitments and continue to support important groups like non-profits and other charitable organizations in the region at the same level in 2019 and 2020.”
BellaVilla wrote:
Everyone who spoke was very excited to tout Missouri and StL as "the agtech capital of the world." While I'm sure they are correct who in agtech has ops in St. Louis besides Bayer and Benson Hill? Are there a ton of other firms I don't know about (excepting small startup firms)?
There's quite a large number of global agtech here. Consider how the Danforth Plant Science Center and the tag-teams of BioSTL & GlobalSTL have attracted dozens of international companies to set up their North American ops in STL, with a considerably large presence of South American and Israeli companies based here. With the large presence of KWS in STL, Bayer isn't even the only major German ag sciences company to have their North American ops based in STL. This is all furthered by the sheer tonnage of agricultural goods exported out of the Port of St. Louis.
"St. Louis is home to the world’s largest concentration of plant scientists, and more than 750 plant and medical science organizations are based here."
Biz Journals with a feel good article on what should be a good trend for the region overall. Behind paywall so not sure their is much to add or tidbit that forum is unaware of. Of course, having Centene being a big buyer has a been a huge plus
Little background on Bayer moving 500 jobs to St. Louis. While the press made it sound like we were competing for the jobs with RTP, the announcement apparently caught North Carolina officials way off guard.
For those that don't have a subscription, here is the text:
Despite the headlines, North Carolina didn’t appear to have a real shot at the 500 Bayer jobs that just went to Missouri.
Bayer – which had 1,000 employees in the Research Triangle near Raleigh, North Carolina, prior to its $63 billion buyout of St. Louis-based Monsanto – announced last week that it would be adding 500 jobs to its Creve Coeur crop science unit. But Bayer relocating North Carolina jobs to the St. Louis area wasn’t a surprise – despite some of the headlines. North Carolina's Commerce Department says it was not working to land those jobs.
The Missouri incentives offer, at more than $44 million, was a new detail in what’s been a years-long exit. As early as 2016, executives were making public statements about moving both Bayer’s North American commercial headquarters and its seeds and trait business from Research Triangle Park to St. Louis when its mega-merger with Monsanto closed.
“When you compare the two companies, there’s a tremendous amount of shared vision… and I think that bodes well for St. Louis,” Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant said in September 2016 just after the marriage was announced between Bayer and Monsanto.
But emails made available at the behest of a public records request show the incentivized announcement in Missouri last week caught officials’ attention at the North Carolina State Capitol nonetheless. “Wow,” reads a July 17 internal email from North Carolina Department of Commerce spokeswoman Beth Gargan, linking to an article on the Missouri jobs.
“We need to discuss at Monday’s meeting,” writes Julie Snee, finance officer for North Carolina's Commerce Department, July 18, sending colleagues a link to a story about the move.
According to a Commerce spokesman, North Carolina was not engaged in an effort to recruit the jobs cited in the Missouri announcement.
And it doesn’t appear from public records or company statements that they were given much of an opportunity. While Bayer and North Carolina Commerce officials stayed in contact, a 2017 meeting was described in public records as a way to update “regarding some potential changes to Bayer’s operations in North Carolina," records show – not as an incentives negotiation.
That’s despite Bayer’s long history in Research Triangle Park (RTP), the nation's largest research park, surrounded by Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, and anchored by three universities. Little mention was made of the Triangle on those early earnings conference calls discussing the Monsanto marriage, despite the fact that, when the deal was announced, Bayer was the 12th largest employer in RTP, according to Triangle Business Journal research.
In an emailed statement Tuesday, Darren Wallis, vice president of North American communications for Bayer, says the company maintained all along that Bayer would continue to have "an important presence" in North Carolina after the deal. He adds that not all of the 500 jobs being created in St. Louis will be coming from the Triangle. "Relocating people from other Bayer facilities – including RTP – is an option," notes Wallis. "Our goal will be to best meet the needs of our business while recruiting the talent required to be successful in the near and long term."
Whatever the impact, a divestment that closed last year did alleviate the local hit. Bayer divested multiple assets – including RTP real estate – to BASF last year. The divestment included 385 employees, and BASF has pledged to grow that operation. Bayer continues to operate its Environmental Science unit in Cary, North Carolina, Wallis notes. That unit has about 150 people today, and Bayer continues to house a "Research and Educational facility" in Clayton, North Carolina, Wallis adds.
Peak Resorts to be acquired by Vail Resorts. Peak Resorts is the company behind Hidden Valley Ski Resort in Wildwood, which is one of 16 ski resorts they own and 17 they manage. The $264MM deal is at a price of $11/share, reflecting a 116% premium to its close last Friday.
This reduces the number of publicly traded companies in the region to an incredibly low count of 27.
gone corporate wrote:
Peak Resorts to be acquired by Vail Resorts. Peak Resorts is the company behind Hidden Valley Ski Resort in Wildwood, which is one of 16 ski resorts they own and 17 they manage. The $264MM deal is at a price of $11/share, reflecting a 116% premium to its close last Friday.
This reduces the number of publicly traded companies in the region to an incredibly low count of 27.
The whole thing was very bittersweet for me. To see that a company as big Vail would be so interested in our local ski hill and kept on saying how important the STL market was, which they kept repeating that it was a "major metropolitan area", was amazing. I also couldn't believe my eyes when I was reading the Vail season pass, saying it would work at Breckenridge(CO), Kirkwood (Reno-Taho), Whistler (BC), Park City (Salt Lake).... and Snow creek and Hidden Valley in MO. It's an honor to even be in the same sentence as those other ski resorts. Of course, rates were already hiked. Of course, it will no longer be a locally owned ski resort, but I can live with that. The main drawback for me was the loss of jobs and the headquarters for STL. It was honestly a crazy success story, a small ski hill in the midwest started buying out/creating other smaller ski hills, only ro graduate to major ski resorts in the northeast, only to be swallowed up by one of the big resort companies.
Saw this in St. Louis PR this morning. Bayer has begun their St. Louis expansion and will not only be creating new jobs and moving some employees from RTP, but they are also moving employees to St. Louis from Germany.
“People are literally, physically moving now — this summer,” Condon said during a visit to the company’s agronomy center in Jerseyville, Illinois
Also seems the transferees so far are really liking St. Louis:
“...adding that the transferred empolyees “really like living in St. Louis. We’ve gotten some very positive feedback.”
When in Lucerne Switzerland two years ago, our bus driver said he was from St Louis. He said his wife was transferred to Basil from St Louis by Pfizer. So I guess Bayer is the flip side of that. (Driver was a riot sticking it to Chicago tourists on the bus.)
Not anything huge and probably not more than a dozen jobs at least for now, but with the geospatial growth here I saw that DigitalGlobe is opening an office, after closing theirs here and moving people to Denver 6 years ago. Nice to see them coming back.
“We’re excited by Bunge’s decision to relocate its global HQ to St. Louis County. This announcement underscores our region’s growing status as an international leader in ag tech.”
This is huge for St. Louis. Not only are we getting another Fortune 500 company in the area, but it will send a message to other companies in the Crop Science/Biotech industry.
There are currently 525 employees in Chesterfield. From the BJ:
Bunge's four-story, 145,000-square-foot Chesterfield location, which was completed in November 2017, has a capacity for about 750 workers but its footprint enables expansion, Bunge officials said. It is served by about 800 parking spaces, 650 of which are in a garage.
. We need a company like that downtown or up North to really spark a renaissance.