Silicon Valley Bank Opens Arizona IT Center

Silicon Valley Bank in Santa Clara, Calif., has opened a new back office facility in Tempe, Ariz., that it says will eventually house nearly 500 employees.

Officials at the $21 billion-asset unit of SVB Financial (SIVB) said that the 50,000-square-foot, information technology facility opened in June and already has 75 employees. The company expects to add another 25 workers by the end of this year and expects to have 220 workers in place there within four years and 460 employees there within seven years.

Some of the workers will be relocated from other facilities in California and others will be new hires. The employees will be paid an average annual salary of $88,000.

Carrie Merritt, SVB's director of public relations, said Thursday that the company chose the Tempe site over locations in its home state for economic reasons.

"We were looking for a desirable place for people to live and work that was affordable from a commercial real estate perspective and affordable from our employees' perspective," Merritt said, adding that it considered sites in Texas before choosing Arizona.

Government incentives also factored into the decision. Maricopa County's Board of Supervisors has committed $1 million to the project and the Arizona Commerce Authority has committed $3 million, provided that the company meets certain investment targets. The company is also eligible for other state incentives over time, Merritt said.

The opening of the new information technology facility capped a busy June for Silicon Valley Bank. Earlier in the month it opened a full-service branch in London — its first outside of the U.S. — and announced a plan to lend $100 million to emerging companies in Ireland.

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