With Qualcomm in Play, San Diego Fears Losing ‘Our Flag’
- 6 years ago
With Qualcomm in Play, San Diego Fears Losing ‘Our Flag’
Irwin Jacobs, a co-founder of the company and its original chief executive, is a prolific philanthropist whose name is on the engineering school
and the medical center of the University of California, San Diego, along with a food bank, a music center, a contemporary art museum and a playhouse.
SAN DIEGO — For corporate success, no story in San Diego is as good as the story of Qualcomm.
With 13,000 local employees whose salaries average about $105,000, Qualcomm generates about $7.4 billion, or 3.6 percent, of the
region’s annual economic output, according to Kelly Cunningham, a principal with the San Diego Institute for Economic Research.
“As a businessperson in San Diego, if you’re not following this you’re living in a cave,”
said Jason Hughes, chief executive of Hughes Marino, a commercial real estate brokerage.
And while there is no reason to think a new owner would pull out of the area altogether, Qualcomm would almost certainly see big cuts — prospectively $3 billion
a year, or more than 10 percent — across the company, said Stacy Rasgon, a longtime analyst of the semiconductor industry at Sanford C. Bernstein.
For each job the company generates, the city gets almost two
and a half more out of the indirect economic effects, according to a 2013 report from the San Diego Workforce Partnership.
The company was founded in a living room and became the world’s largest maker of smartphone
chips, one of the area’s largest employers and its chief corporate benefactor.
Last fall, Broadcom, a rival chip maker, offered to buy the company in a $105 billion deal that would be the largest technology buyout in history.
Irwin Jacobs, a co-founder of the company and its original chief executive, is a prolific philanthropist whose name is on the engineering school
and the medical center of the University of California, San Diego, along with a food bank, a music center, a contemporary art museum and a playhouse.
SAN DIEGO — For corporate success, no story in San Diego is as good as the story of Qualcomm.
With 13,000 local employees whose salaries average about $105,000, Qualcomm generates about $7.4 billion, or 3.6 percent, of the
region’s annual economic output, according to Kelly Cunningham, a principal with the San Diego Institute for Economic Research.
“As a businessperson in San Diego, if you’re not following this you’re living in a cave,”
said Jason Hughes, chief executive of Hughes Marino, a commercial real estate brokerage.
And while there is no reason to think a new owner would pull out of the area altogether, Qualcomm would almost certainly see big cuts — prospectively $3 billion
a year, or more than 10 percent — across the company, said Stacy Rasgon, a longtime analyst of the semiconductor industry at Sanford C. Bernstein.
For each job the company generates, the city gets almost two
and a half more out of the indirect economic effects, according to a 2013 report from the San Diego Workforce Partnership.
The company was founded in a living room and became the world’s largest maker of smartphone
chips, one of the area’s largest employers and its chief corporate benefactor.
Last fall, Broadcom, a rival chip maker, offered to buy the company in a $105 billion deal that would be the largest technology buyout in history.