City shrugs off Cigna's move

City officials breathed a sigh of relief Tuesday.

Cigna Corp., one of the nation's largest insurers, whose history in Philadelphia dates back to 1792, isn't packing up and moving its entire workforce from Philadelphia to Connecticut. It is retaining 1,100 jobs and using multiple floors of office space at Two Liberty Plaza in Center City.

Cigna executives, however, are formalizing what had already been pretty much of a done deal - moving corporate headquarters to Bloomfield, Conn., taking that state's governor up on a $50 million economic incentive to bring 200 jobs to Connecticut.

The fact that the city has lost yet another corporate flag doesn't appear to be too troubling, as long as the jobs stay here, officials say.

"It's disappointing what they are doing," said Alan Greenberger, deputy mayor for economic development. "But I don't think of it as a serious blow. They are retaining 1,100 jobs. They are retaining a lot of important functions."

David Cordani, Cigna's chief executive, called Mayor Nutter on Monday to deliver the news. By the time the call came, a day before Tuesday's noon news conference in Connecticut, there was little the city could do to change Cigna's mind.

"This was new news to us," Greenberger said. "This was quietly being planned for sometime, I assume."

Cigna's move also caught the state by surprise.

"While we regret that the corporate headquarters will be relocating to Connecticut, we are relieved by the company's statement that they plan to retain all employees at the Philadelphia facility," said Theresa Elliott, a spokeswoman for Pennsylvania's Department of Community and Economic Development.

After appearing at a news conference with Gov. Dannel P. Malloy in Connecticut at noon, Cordani traveled to Philadelphia to talk to staffers in Center City.

Cordani said that although he had been in conversations with Pennsylvania and Philadelphia officials, "we didn't do an auction per se," to see whether either the city or the state would compete with Connecticut's $50 million lure.

"This was a unique program and it really lined up nicely to where our existing employment footprint was," he said. Cigna has about 3,100 employees at its complex in Bloomfield, outside Hartford.

To gain the $50 million, Cigna had to promise to add 200 jobs, a cost to Connecticut of $250,000 per job. Cigna can get a total of $80 million by adding a total of 800 over the next 10 years.