First Data Corp. has relocated its corporate headquarters to Atlanta, reversing a move from Atlanta to Greenwood Village that the electronic-payments giant made in May 2001.
The company announced the headquarters move in its second- quarter earnings statement Friday. But top executives have already relocated, including chief executive and chairman Michael Capellas.
“We are pulling our management team together,” Capellas told analysts on a conference call. “We will continue to have a large presence in Denver.”
In late June, First Data announced a joint venture with Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America. Top management wanted to be closer to that operation, which will be based in Atlanta, said spokeswoman Elizabeth Grice.
Atlanta also is home to several large First Data customers, including Home Depot, Chick-fil-A, Arby’s and Suntrust. And the city is considered an important hub of the electronic-payment business.
“Denver will remain a key administrative site,” Grice said. “We have 1,500 employees here in Colorado, and we don’t expect them to be significantly impacted.”
Executives running human resources and legal counsel will remain in Denver, along with several support services, Grice said.
Tom Clark, executive vice president of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, said business and state leaders had been trying for months to persuade First Data executives to keep their headquarters in Denver.
First Data officials told Clark that Atlanta’s advantages over Denver included quicker flight access to Europe — by about five hours. Europe has become a more important source of business for the company.
“Ultimately it becomes a decision preference on the part of the CEO,” Clark said. “But they’ve been looking at a strategy to consolidate, and they already have a major presence in Atlanta.”
Grice, however, denied that the move was based on Capellas’ personal preferences.
“There wasn’t any sort of personal decision made on Michael’s part,” she said.
First Data’s involvement with the local community dropped after Kohlberg Kravis Roberts completed a leveraged buyout of the company in September 2007, said John Brackney, president and chief executive of the South Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce.
“I didn’t know about this; it kills me,” Brackney said on hearing the news.
“They’ve been a major player in previous decades and were involved in everything,” he said. “If this shows us anything, it’s that we should rally around the importance of corporate headquarters in Colorado.”
The heavy debt First Data took on in the buyout and the tough economy have forced job cuts, which have reduced the company’s local workforce to 1,500 from 2,000.
Economic-development officials fear that, over time, more jobs will flow to Atlanta, now home to about 750 First Data workers.
“We are going to call a meeting Monday morning,” said Don Marostica, the state’s economic-development chief. “We are working on two first calls, one with Frontier and one with First Data on retaining jobs.”
Aldo Svaldi: 303-954-1410 or asvaldi@denverpost.com
