US tech firm creates NI jobs bonanza

A United States-owned technology company in Northern Ireland said today it was creating 300 more jobs this year and held out the possibility of many more to follow.

Northbrook Technology, which employs 1,000 staff in Belfast and Derry, gave details of expansion plans during a visit by bosses of is parent company, the US insurance giant Allstate Corporation.

Five-year-old Northbrook declined to confirm speculation it was planning to open a new operation soon in the north west of the province, but managing director Bro McFerran gave broad hints.

“We continue to grow. Just watch this space. I would expect that we would see announcements coming.”

The company had been creating new jobs at the rate of 300 a year in Northern Ireland over the last three to four years, he said.

“I see no reason why this can’t continue,” he added.

Allstate chairman Edward Liddy said: “We sure like what we see here. That probably leads us to want to do more here.”

The employees in Northern Ireland did an “extraordinary job” and the Northern Ireland operation was “very cost effective”, he said.

It was a “very good combination and when you see that kind of success you feel good about putting in more jobs, not less”.

Allstate has some 50,000 employees scattered around the world, the vast bulk in the US.

Thomas Wilson, president of Allstate Protection, said technology developed by Northbrook raised the prospect of many back office jobs being moved out of the US – with Northern Ireland competing for its share.

The back office jobs used to have to be done in the US “because there was a piece of paper attached to it”, he said.

With the development of new technologies where images could be beamed across the oceans, jobs could be moved to where the costs were less.

“If we moved our billing calls from the US to Ireland that would be a huge number of jobs,” said Mr Wilson.

The visiting Allstate bosses were tonight having a private dinner with the heads of Invest Northern Ireland, the British government-funded body tasked with attracting inward investment to the province.

It provides financial incentives in investing companies, something Edward Liddy said was an important part of the equation when considering expansion.

Invest NI published its annual report for 2003 today and was told it “could do better” by the Federation of Small Businesses in the North.

Policy chairman Wilfred Mitchell said while the FSB recognised Invest NI had some success, they were still failing in a number of key areas and targets.

The business body was also concerned at the “very unbalanced geographical spread of business start-ups and visits by inward investment trips”.

There had been success in exceeding the target of 1,500 business start-ups with a final total of 1983, he said – but asked for details of how many of the new businesses were still trading.