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V O L . X X I I N O. I X M AY 2 , 2 0 1 6 16 Visa International, TD Canada Trust, Sun Life Financial, PNC Bank, Discover Card and Progressive Insurance. In the Portland area, Pratt & Whitney, with a plant in North Berwick, is a client. "Portland enjoys signifi cant labor cost savings vs. New York City — it's about 20% less," says Boyd, who spoke with Mainebiz during a Patriot's Day visit to Portland to meet with a client. "Class A or Class B offi ce space, the prices are very attractive in Portland — and by 'Portland,' we're not necessar- ily talking about downtown Portland. We're talking about the Greater Portland area. ere's a plethora of offi ce space opportunities and there's a signifi cant cost variable vs. Boston." e Boyd Co.'s global site selection study compares operating costs scaled to a hypothetical 30,000-square-foot corporate back offi ce in the fi nancial services sector employing 125 workers. It came out in mid-March and com- pares metropolitan area populations of at least 500,000 that the company considers to be on the radar for new corporate back offi ce relocations. e study ranks Montreal as the least expensive North American back offi ce location, with a total annual oper- ating cost for the hypothetical corpo- rate offi ce of $7.1 million per year. San Francisco comes in as the most costly North American city at $12.4 million per year. Portland comes in at $10.1 mil- lion per year, approximately 20% less expensive than New York City ($11.96 million) and 10% less than Boston ($11.1 million). Tunis, in the North African country of Tunisia, is the lowest-cost city overall at $3 million annually. Increasingly, Boyd says, companies are conducting global searches for locations to house back offi ce operations — typi- cally support functions like accounting, fi nance, information technology, customer service, human resources, marketing and training. Montreal, the lowest-cost North American city in the analysis, has attracted 2,000 jobs from Boston-based State Street Corp. and New York City- based Morgan Stanley, which announced in January a new effi ciency plan called Project Streamline that's expected to reduce costs by $1 billion by 2017. "Back offi ce migration is one of the hottest sectors of the corporate relocation industry today," Boyd Co.'s analysis states. "While back offi ce moves by fi nancial services fi rms to cities where operating costs are a fraction of fi nancial capitals like New York and London is not entirely new, the pace is at an unprecedented level and is putting lower-cost Northeast markets in the sphere of New York City — like Portland — in play for new back offi ce investment and jobs." What's driving those trends, the analysis states, is the realization by many banking and fi nancial services companies that "improving the bot- tom line on the cost side of the ledger is far easier than on the revenue side." John Boyd, principal of The Boyd Co., Inc, shown at the Marriott at Sable Oaks in South Portland, says a new analysis of 45 cities in the United States and abroad shows Portland to be the lowest-cost market in New England for back-offi ce operations. But, he adds, Canada may be a better deal right now. P H O T O / JA M E S M C C A R T H Y 'Back office' migration Portland may be best in New England, but it lags far behind Montreal B y J a m e s M c C a r t h y F O C U S P R E S E N T I N G S P O N S O R R E G I O N A L S P O N S O R HALLOWELL May 19 | 5–7pm | Joyce's in Hallowell www.mainebiz.biz/OTRhallowell 207.761.8379 x341 R E G I S T E R T O DAY Break away from your desk to meet and mingle with other members of the Hallowell region and surrounding business community at our third stop in the 2016 On the Road with Mainebiz series! This is a great forum to put a face with a name plus make new business connections. u admission is free u complimentary hors d'oeuvres u cash bar FOLLOW US @MBEVENTS #OTRHallowell16 » C O N T I N U E D F R O M C O V E R

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