Worcester Business Journal

18 Worcester Business Journal | October 28, 2024 | wbjournal.com 35th Anniversary WBJ the San Jose Sharks announced in January that they would relocate their AHL affiliate to Worcester to begin play at the DCU Center for the 2006-07 season. The Sharks stayed through the 2014 season. • Honest to Goodness, it's a merger – The holding companies of Hudson Savings Bank and West- borough Bank agreed to a merger in November that would create a nine-office regional bank with $995 million in assets. The new entity would be rebranded Avidia Bank. 2007 • Commerce Insurance cashes in – Webster-based Commerce Group, formerly Commerce Insurance Company, agreed to be acquired by Spain's largest insurer, MAPFRE S.A., in a $2.21 billion cash deal. Commerce was renamed MAPFRE USA in 2010. • Gateway to the future – Worces- ter Polytechnic Institute opened its Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center at the burgeoning 11-acre Gateway Park, a joint venture be- tween WPI, the city and Worcester Business Development Corp. 2008 • Morgan no more – Long one of Worcester's most prominent and profitable family-owned businesses, Morgan Construction was acquired in April by Austria-based Siemens subsidiary Siemens VAI Metal Tech- nologies. The global leader in rolling mill technology had been owned by five generations of the Morgan family and had 1,100 employees world- wide, including 460 in Worcester. • Genzyme expands in Framingham – Biotech and pharmaceutical giant Genzyme Corp. opened its $125 million Framingham Science Center in September, adding 350 employees to its 20-year-old MetroWest campus. The new headcount of about 2,000 made the facility Genzyme's largest in the world. The newly enacted $1 billion Massachusetts Life Sciences Act awarded Framingham its first grant of $5.2 million to facilitate construction. 2009 • Networking event – With the proliferation of social media, area chambers of commerce and busi- ness groups organized copious so- cial networking seminars to educate corporate leaders – though the Dec. 21, 2009, edition of WBJ said, "the jury's still out on how widely accept- ed [these services] are becoming," noting that EMC's 3,000 Twitter followers were the most of any com- pany in the region. Dell, with which EMC merged in 2016, has more than 820,000 followers on X in 2024. • WBJ Milestone: Outstanding Women in Business awards debut 2010 • Massport takes a flyer on ORH – The Massachusetts Port Authority bought Worcester Regional Airport from the city in June for $15 million. Then-Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray said the state was taking an "integrated" approach to transporta- tion. The maligned airport in recent years had been running an annual deficit of about $3 million. • Big Tech comes to Littleton – IBM opened its largest U.S. software development lab in the North County enclave. The IBM Mass Lab, in- cluding sites in Westford, employed about 3,400 top software designers. IBM announced in 2021 that it would be closing the Littleton facility to consolidate operations in Lowell. 2011 • Corporate espionage knocks wind out of AMSC – The writing on the wall began in the spring, when Devens-based American Super- conductor announced revised, and much lower, revenue figures in the wake of an earlier announcement that a Chinese customer had begun refusing wind turbine shipments. By September company founder Gregory J. Yurek retired and $186.3 million in losses were reported. Then things got worse. For a reported $20,500 bribe, an employee of AMSC's Austria-based subsidiary Windtec sold turbine con- trol software to Sinovel, the Chinese customer that had contracted with AMSC for $800 million in products and services. According to evidence presented by the Department of Justice at Sinovel's 2018 fraud trial, AMSC lost more than $1 billion in shareholder equity and almost 700 jobs. The company also lost 84 Continued from previous page

• Cover