New jobs for the North announced as US businesses invest

The New York Stock Exchange announced a job-creating investment in Belfast today as UK prime minister Gordon Brown and Taoiseach Brian Cowen travelled to the city to encourage American business chiefs to invest in the North.

A three-day conference organised by the power-sharing Stormont executive involving more than 120 US corporate chiefs was fast becoming a success.

As delegates gathered for a busy day of meetings, NYSE Euronext announced it was expanding local financial software company Wombat, which it bought for £100m (€127m) in March.

New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) chief executive Duncan Niederauer said it would be increasing the workforce from 100 to 175 through a £3m (€3.8m) investment. The jobs would be in place by 2010.

Welcoming the high value ICT jobs, the North's Economy minister Nigel Dodds said it was in one of the sectors ministers had targeted for investment.

He said: “This is an important sector and one which has the potential to generate considerable growth in the economy through the development of indigenous companies and through new foreign direct investment.

“Projects like this further enhance our reputation as a prime location for international investment.”

Mr Dodds said the North had come a long way in the past 10 years, economically, socially and politically.

He said: “Our economy is transitioning successfully towards tradeable services and niche manufacturing.

“Whilst we can compete in areas of niche manufacturing, in the past 10 years Northern Ireland has developed a growing reputation to develop software for telecoms, to locate financial services and business application, and increasingly to undertake sophisticated financial processing including fund management.”

Wombat specialises in the development of advanced software solutions for global financial markets. Its products are used to transmit stock exchange data around financial institutions at high speed so that rapid trading decisions can be made

Mr Niederauer said: “I continue to be impressed with the levels of skills possessed by local software developers and engineers.

“I am confident that Northern Ireland will continue to deliver the competitive edge we require to meet increasing global demand for our innovative technology products and services.”

First Minister the Rev Ian Paisley said the conference was an opportunity to showcase the North as an investment location to some of the world’s most prestigious companies.

“Today is a good news day for us. We had good news yesterday and we have good news today. We are on the right road and will keep right on to the end of the road and see Ulster prosperous.”

The investment announcement was the third made at the conference in little over 12 hours and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said: “With this investment, Wombat is sending out a clear vote of confidence in our talented people and the potential they offer firms in growth sectors such as ICT.

“I hope that as delegates return home to the US, they will be taking with them a more positive image of this region, one which is attracting investment and reinvestment from some of the world’s highest-profile companies.”