A year after announcing it would relocate its corporate headquarters to Nashville from New York City, AllianceBernstein (AB) is well on its way to hitting its goal of one day employing more than 1,000 people in Middle Tennessee.
In fact, the global financial firm’s growth thus far in Nashville has far outpaced its leadership team’s initial hope.
[perfectpullquote align=”left” bordertop=”false” cite=”Jim Gingrich, Chief Operating Officer, AB” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“We had really high expectations when we made the choice and I think they’ve been exceeded on many, many dimensions.”[/perfectpullquote]
“We had really high expectations when we made the choice and I think they’ve been exceeded on many, many dimensions,” Jim Gingrich, AB’s chief operating officer, said. “The objective is still 1,000, but we’re getting there faster than we thought. We are a little north of 300 people who are employed here at this point.”
AB’s decision to bring its corporate headquarters to Nashville marked one of Tennessee’s largest – and most consequential – economic development wins in recent years. The firm’s arrival opens the door for other major financial firms to potentially follow a similar course. But most immediately, the investment and research firm – which manages upwards of $500 billion in assets around the globe – is investing more than $70 million in a new downtown headquarters on Broadway, where AB plans to move by the end of 2020.
We recently caught up with Gingrich and his colleagues at AB’s temporary Nashville office space. At every turn the conservation came back to Middle Tennessee’s ample supply of talent to match the company’s highly-skilled positions.
“We did not anticipate having 300 people this quickly,” Gingrich said. “A big part of our decision was around the talent base. And I think we have been really pleasantly surprised with our ability to source great talent in Middle Tennessee.