NCR moving HQ to Duluth, to bring 2,100-plus jobs to Georgia by Urvaksh Karkaria

NCR Corp., a Fortune 500 company, will move its corporate headquarters from Dayton, Ohio, to Duluth, Ga., adding clout to metro Atlanta’s technology reputation.

NCR will relocate 1,250 corporate jobs to its Gwinnett County operation, a source familiar with the plan said. The company is also expected to launch a 550,000-square-foot manufacturing operation in Columbus, Ga., where it will employ nearly 880, the source said.

Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue is expected to make the official announcement Tuesday.

NCR CEO Bill Nuti and Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland spoke by phone Monday evening, and Nuti told Strickland the company has been looking at Georgia for some time, an official in the Ohio governor’s office told Atlanta Business Chronicle sister publication Dayton Business Journal (DBJ).

In a letter to Nuti obtained by the Chronicle, Strickland offered more than $31.1 million in economic incentives to convince Nuti to keep the company in Ohio.

On May 31, the Chronicle, and the DBJ, first reported NCR’s interest in relocating to Georgia.

NCR (NYSE: NCR), which makes automated teller machines (ATMs) and retail self-checkouts, will be Georgia’s 14th Fortune 500 company and the second in Duluth. Last July, Asbury Automotive Group Inc. (NYSE: ABG) announced the relocation of its headquarters to Duluth from New York.

NCR, which employs 20,000 employees globally, ranked 446 on the 2009 Fortune 500 list. The company, which did not return calls Monday, reported a $228 million profit on $5.3 billion in revenue last year.

Last fall, NCR said it would move its Worldwide Customer Services headquarters to metro Atlanta, investing $15 million and creating more than 900 jobs in Peachtree City and Duluth. In October, NCR said it would co-locate an NCR Learning Center and its Customer Care Center hub for the Americas region with the company’s existing Global Service Materials operation in Peachtree City.

NCR, which occupies about 150,000 square feet at its Satellite Boulevard operation in Duluth, will lease an additional 100,000 to 200,000 square feet at that facility. The corporate jobs will pay on average about $70,000 annually.

The manufacturing distribution operation will be in two buildings and will make ATMs, according to the source. Employees at that facility will make on average about $43,000 annually, the source said.

NCR received tax incentives from both Gwinnett and Columbus governments, the source said, declining to disclose details about the state’s incentive package.

While Dayton — where NCR was founded in 1884 — is the company’s official headquarters, the city is not the center of the company’s influence.

Nuti, along with the company’s chief financial officer and other senior executives, maintain offices on an entire floor of 7 World Trade Center in Manhattan. In March, NCR removed the language “world headquarters” from the sign at its Dayton campus. Nuti will not be moving to Atlanta.

Relocating to Atlanta — the commercial capital of the Southeast — makes sense for the company.

Four of the cities in Ohio — Youngstown, Canton, Dayton and Cleveland— are among the top 10 dying cities in America, according to an August 2008 report in Forbes.

“They [NCR] can’t recruit talent to move to Dayton, Ohio,” the source said.

Delta Air Lines Inc. (NYSE: DAL), The Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD) and Sun Trust Banks Inc. (NYSE: STI) — big NCR customers — are also based in metro Atlanta.

NCR supplies Delta with self-service kiosks, and NCR and Home Depot announced a deal in 2002 to install self-checkout lanes in about 800 of its 1,487 stores. In 2007, the two companies announced a deal to expand the project into Home Depot stores in Canada.

In 2005, SunTrust said NCR would upgrade existing ATMs and provide new ATMs for all new SunTrust branches.