GE location to be decided by year’s end

CEO does not say if company will be leaving Connecticut

The chairman of General Electric Co. said Thursday during a TV interview that the company would decide where to locate its headquarters by the end of the year.

Chairman Jeffrey Immelt told CNBC that deciding whether to move its headquarters from Fairfield, current- ly under review by a committee, is an important decision.

“We’ve been there for 40 years, so we would never do anything like this carelessly or casually,’’ Immelt said during an interview in New York City. “It’s the kind of thing you only think about every 40 years. You want to make sure you get it right.’’

Immelt did not say GE would leave Connecticut, where the company moved its headquarters in the early ’70s, from Schenectady, N.Y. Immelt had written a memo to fellow employees that said GE was looking at the options of moving to a state with ‘‘a more pro-business environment.’’

“You want to be someplace where people support job creation, where it’s attractive to talent, good cost of living, and that is very supportive of what a high-tech exporter has to be all about,’’ he said on CNBC. “It is a global battle that we are in, and we need people who are on our side.’’

Immelt’s comments prompted Senate Republican leader Len Fasano to again call for a special legislative session to reconsider corporate taxes— including the “combined reporting’’ method of calculating the corporate income tax that GE sharply has criticized.

The reporting method, already used by some companies, becomes mandatory at the start of 2016. It would affect corporations with operations in multiple states.

Fasano had called for such a session last month, but was rebuffed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and Senate Democrats. Malloy’s spokesman said Thursday there are still no plans to call a special session.

General Electric has about 800 headquarters employees in Fairfield and 5,700 employees in total in Connecticut, mostly with GE Capital, which largely is being sold.

GE complained publicly about the state’s business taxes in June. Since then, 11 governors have visited GE headquarters in Fairfield, including Malloy. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat like Malloy, visited the headquarters in July to talk to top executives.

Published reports also have said the governors of Texas and Georgia have reached out to GE.