Lincoln will move 400 jobs to Radnor

Lincoln National Corp. will move 400 jobs, including the chief executive's, to Radnor from Center City, a spokeswoman for the financial-services company said yesterday.

The company had been "looking for space that will meet our needs going forward . . . where people can interact a little more easily," the spokeswoman, Laurel O'Brien, said. The corporate headquarters will remain in Philadelphia.

The move to 180,000 square feet of office space in the Radnor Financial Center will occur in phases into next year and will involve such functions as sales and finance.

"We still are very committed to the city," O'Brien said.

Lincoln moved to Center City from Fort Wayne, Ind., in 1999, bringing just 60 jobs, but giving politicians and other city boosters something to crow about after the city had lost Fortune 500 companies Bell Atlantic Corp., Conrail Inc. and CoreStates Financial Corp. in the 1990s.

Lincoln, which bought Center City's Delaware Investments in 1995, made its mark on the city soon after moving its headquarters here, agreeing in 2002 to pay $139.6 million over 20 years to have the Eagles' new football stadium named after the company's trade name, Lincoln Financial.

Lincoln's chairman and chief executive officer, Jon A. Boscia, who earned $20.45 million in total compensation in 2005, was not available for an interview yesterday, O'Brien said. She said his main office will be in Radnor, closer to his home in Gladwyne.

Working outside Philadelphia will exempt him from the city's wage tax.

O'Brien did not have an employment number for Lincoln Financial in Center City. But she said the 400 jobs being relocated were less than half of the Center City workforce.

City Commerce Director Stephanie Naidoff estimated Lincoln's total employment in the city at 1,200. The city had been working with Lincoln for five or six months to find appropriate space in the city, but "for strategic reasons, they wanted contiguous space," she said.

Total employment at Lincoln, which has $234 billion in assets under management, was 10,744 as of Dec. 31, according to the company's annual report.

The company, which posted a 2006 profit of $1.3 billion on revenue of $9.1 billion, sells life insurance, mutual funds, annuities, college-savings plans, retirement accounts and financial-planning services.

In the late 1990s, the city offered Lincoln a $1 million incentive package to move here, but the deal was never signed, Naidoff said.

Lincoln's move was first reported yesterday on the Web site of the Philadelphia Business Journal.