Another corporate headquarters to leave Connecticut
Fujifilm Medical Systems departing Stamford to consolidate business
Fujifilm confirmed Wednesday that it has abandoned Stamford as the headquarters for its medical device subsidiary, choosing to consolidate the unit in Lexington, Mass.
Fujifilm Medical Systems had facilities in Stamford’s River Bend Center office park and on West Avenue, where it managed U.S. marketing of imaging systems for hospitals and clinics under CEO Takaaki Ueda.
In a written statement, Ueda indicated the Lexington consolidation offered the company a better opportunity to collaborate across business units focused on imaging and digital archive technology it sells under the Synapse brand. Fujifilm Medical retains its two other New York Cityarea satellite offices in Valhalla, N.Y., and Wayne, N.J.
Fujifilm Medical did not state immediately how many employees are relocating to Lexington, but the City of Stamford reported a headquarters office count of 175 people in a 2018 economic development brochure.
Arthur Augustyn, a spokesman for Stamford Mayor David Martin, indicated Fujifilm notified Stamford in advance of its intent to move its Connecticut operations to Massachusetts.
“Business operation consolidations are common in today’s market and not representative of the relationship a business has with a
municipality,” Augustyn said. “Fujifilm ... reaffirmed their satisfaction with working with Stamford as a partner.”
Fujifilm becomes the latest company to move senior corporate staff out of Connecticut, on the heels of General Electric’s 2016 relocation of its Fairfield headquarters to Boston; Diageo electing to shuttle its North American leadership to New York City; and Aetna taking incentives to do the same a few years ago, only to see its plans scotched by new parent CVS Health.
Connecticut has offset losses with the successful recruitment of companies in the current decade, with Charter Communications representing the state’s trophy catch as construction proceeds on the cable giant’s new headquarters in Stamford.
But many in the business community continue to express doubt about the state’s fiscal health and historic record of red tape tied to commercial activities. Only two weeks ago, Gov. Ned Lamont told members of the Business Council of Fairfield County in Stamford that he is pushing to make Connecticut a more competitive state for running a business, including by upping the state’s foundation in innovation.
Lamont added he had met with representatives of “a major production company” that was considering an expansion in Stamford.
“It’s a time of transformation,” Lamont said. “The old UBS building is now going to have — in what was the largest trading floor in the world — one of the largest digital production studios in the world, with WWE here.”
In Fujifilm Medical, however, Connecticut loses a powerhouse in hospital imaging, with the company claiming the sales crown 30 years running for digital xray systems.
Earlier this year, Fujifilm Medical and its Japanbased parent Fujifilm Holdings reached a settlement of a patent dispute with Hologic over mammography technology, with Hologic based in Massachusetts and producing digital mammogram machines at a satellite facility in Danbury.
At last report, more than 35,000 computed radiography systems from Fujifilm Medical were in use at imaging clinics globally. dropped by 14.5 percent, with the next highest bracket down 12.4 percent, encompassing those making between $75,000 and $100,000.
The lone tax brackets where the average U.S. earner absorbed an increase in the overall federal tax liability was for those making between $5,000 and $15,000, but the preliminary IRS data shows that far fewer people filed income for those brackets in 2018 compared to the year before.