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Biotech firm Incyte is moving 400 workers from Pennsylvania to Wilmington

Delaware has offered the company $15 million in incentives to concentrate its holdings in and around Wilmington.

Hervé Hoppenot is Incyte's chief executive. The company has announced plans to move its headquarters to downtown Wilmington and expand its labs on the edge of town.
Hervé Hoppenot is Incyte's chief executive. The company has announced plans to move its headquarters to downtown Wilmington and expand its labs on the edge of town.Read moreJoseph N. DiStefano / Joseph N. DiStefano

Aided by $15 million in Delaware state incentives, Incyte, a fast-growing company that develops and sells cancer and anti-inflammatory drugs, is moving 400 employees from Chadds Ford, Pa., to two buildings in the former MBNA-Bank of America complex in Wilmington.

The move will help fill the vacuum left in Wilmington’s Rodney Square office district by the departure of the DuPont Co. and major banks over the past 20 years.

The new location will “enable closer collaboration between our teams” and make it easier for Incyte to keep growing, Incyte chief executive Hervé Hoppenot said in a statement.

State officials helped guide Incyte to the central Wilmington location after New Castle County officials refused Incyte’s earlier plan to build on the site of the Wilmington Friends Lower School north of the city, Gov. John Carney said in an interview.

“They were serious about looking in Pennsylvania. My goal was to keep them in Delaware,” said Carney, who plans to run for Wilmington mayor in November. His term as governor ends in January.

Incyte employs 2,500 worldwide, including 800 in suburban Wilmington and 400 in Pennsylvania. It has added at least 200 employees annually in each of the past four years. The company earned $600 million in after-tax profits on sales of $3.7 billion last year.

Incyte was founded in 2002 by a group of scientists including staff at DuPont’s former drug unit. Its products include drugs to fight myelofibrosis, vitiligo, rheumatoid arthritis, and cancer. It’s best know for its drug ruxolitinib, known as Jakafi.

Delaware has agreed to pay the publicly traded company $9.18 million if Incyte meets its hiring targets for the next two years. The company expects to add more than 500 positions, according to the Delaware Prosperity Partnership, which gives public grants to employers.

Incyte says most of its work is technical, and management salaries average from $90,000 to more than $200,000 a year.

The state also has agreed to pay Incyte up to $5.67 million toward lab construction. Incyte officials said they did not seek rival aid packages from Pennsylvania or other states, preferring to focus growth in Delaware.

“Delaware has been our home,” Hoppenot said. “We are grateful for the continued support of the state.”

Delaware has also subsidized at least one Incyte spin-off, Prelude Therapeutics.

Hoppenot and other administrators plan to move out of the company’s four-building headquarters complex just north of Wilmington to the downtown offices and replace the original offices with research labs.

“It’s a big deal for our state,” said Carney.

The buildings Incyte will occupy include an eight-story office tower over a parking garage that faces the former DuPont and Wilmington Trust headquarters across the city’s central square, and a smaller building nearby that was “world headquarters” for the late Charles M. Cawley’s MBNA Corp., the largest Visa and MasterCard lender before its 2006 acquisition by Bank of America.

The Incyte move is part of a campaign by Delaware leaders to restore the city’s luster as “America’s corporate capital” and a local employment engine.

Delaware’s reputation as a corporate legal center has separately come under attack from Tesla chief executive Elon Musk; Philip Shawe, founder of the TransPerfect translation service; and other corporate executives displeased by rulings from the state’s Chancery Court.

In a separate effort, the du Pont family-backed Longwood Foundation is aiding a plan to relocate Widener University’s Delaware Law School from suburban Talleyville and Delaware State University’s nursing program in Dover to another former MBNA building in Wilmington, according to Thère du Pont, president of the foundation.

That project will cost over $50 million, and proponents are looking for public and private funding, Carney and du Pont said.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the name of one of Incyte’s drugs and the name of the founder of TransPerfect.