PFPC Global Fund Services, a part of PNC Financial Services Group, is the latest financial services company to move into Rhode Island, bringing nearly 200 jobs to what was an old mill building in Pawtucket.
The legislature over the past few years approved legislation friendly to financial services companies, successfully luring firms like PFPC, Fidelity and Boston Financial.
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In what has been a relatively quite period, PFPC brings the most significant news by its move into an 85,000 square foot building in Pawtucket.
Recently signing a 10-year lease on the Freight Street property, the company is developing a new back office operation. PFPC is member of the PNC Financial Services Group and the nation’s largest full-service mutual fund transfer agent and second largest provider of mutual fund accounting service. Headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, PFPC employs 5,400 in 20 locations in the United States and in Ireland, Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands.
The Pawtucket location is an administrative service provider to the mutual fund industry. PFPC Vice President of Public Relations Jeanette Harrison-Sullivan said the Pawtucket location will handle the administrative responsibilities and that “most mutual funds prefer to spend their time and their expertise on managing their funds, and they outsource the administrative tasks to firms which specialize in that such as PFPC.”
Training began for 180 employees in April. There will probably be more growth though, said Herbert Weiss, program manager for development projects in Pawtucket, pointing to the 420 parking spaces allotted for the site. The salaries of the employees will range from $20,000 to $60,000.
Weiss noted that Pawtucket is the state’s second largest manufacturing city, and said he was excited about diversifying the economy a little more. He was also pleased about PFPC’s decision to set up camp at the site of an old rail-weaving complex.
“Pawtucket has a lot of mill properties that can be rehabilitated into commercial space,” he said. “PFPC saw a gem of a building, and those people will get a real neat work environment.”
Harrison-Sullivan said PFPC will only use half of the 85,000 square feet to begin with, and that the company is planning on spending close to $7 million to build out the interior of the building. This is the sort of prospect that pleases developer Ken Zuckerman.
“It’s a great deal for everybody,” he said.
The PFPC development is among the most notable of local financial services companies, but in a relatively quiet period there were other significant developments.
Sovereign Bank celebrated its first year in the market in June and was phasing out its supermarket branches, many of which will be taken over by Citizens Bank.
FleetBoston, the area’s most aggressive acquirer, announced in early June that it was buying the assets of Liberty Financial Services, Inc. of New York for slightly more than $1 billion in cash and debt. Liberty Financial’s operating companies managed more than $63 billion in assets worldwide.
