|
When Pete DuPont came in he said I'm going to take that percentage - 1819 percent - and I'm going to take it to eight percent. And
Delaware is going to specialize and get some real "hot dogs" who can bring some business and jobs to us immediately in the finance community. To the banking community they said, come and do business in our
state, and the more business you do the lower the rate you'll pay It's known as a volume discount. Which meant more jobs because they would have to have more employees.
At about that time Maryland National Bank, where I was on the Board, had a fledgling credit card operation run by a tremendous executive, Charlie
Caully He took less than 50 people and wanted to get out of bank headquarters. It was at that time Steve Sachs, former Attorney General, was posturing himself to run in the primary for Governor. Sachs thought a very
good issue would be to put a cap on consumer interest payment for rollover on your credit card. Remember in those days, we had double digit inflation, so interest rates were very high. Believe me, if you were in the
banking business and you had a reason to go to Delaware, you would go. That little credit card company went and rented an old A&P supermarket, and they got started. During the crisis at Maryland National when we
had to divest ourselves, we sold the credit card company for stock in order to stay solvent. Now it's a separate corporation, MBNA. It's probably one of the top three credit cards in the world. Do you know how many
people are working there? Over 10,000 people. It didn't need to be in Delaware. It could have been in Maryland.
Bell Atlantic made its decision based on the record of the Public Utilities Commission with the utilities in Maryland versus Pennsylvania. Even
though Maryland had a better package, they opted to go to Philadelphia. But the PUC record was there to be seen. That was a business issue. They now have 2,000 corporate jobs at Bell Atlantic. Can you imagine if
Bell Atlantic were here, with the explosion that company is going through.
Dallas during the late 1970s and early 1980s attracted more home office companies than any other place in the U.S. Headed by . American Airlines,
the Money Store, and the Boy Scouts of America; I think about 26 major home offices moved to Dallas. All Dallas would say was, come on, no state sales tax, here's what we do. We're not going to give you anything
special, we'll facilitate, we'll help you get rolling, but just come and enjoy the goodness that we have here in Texas.
North Carolina has one of the best networks-in the United States. They have every single subdivision tied into a single post in Raleigh. In 1964,
Black & Decker was the first to respond to that. They don't have a highly positive competitive situation in every aspect, but in total North Carolina is extremely attractive.
Virginia, I always like to say, if we could all leave here and stand on the shores of the Potomac River in Prince George's County and look across
at Fairfax County then we might have to ask ourselves, what's going on over there that is not going on over here?
|
