(Reuters) - General Electric Co (N:GE) is expected to decide on a new location for its headquarters in the fourth quarter of this year, Chief Executive Jeff Immelt told CNBC.
The company has been looking at moving its headquarters out of Fairfield, Connecticut after lawmakers passed a budget in June that includes $1.2 billion in tax increases despite protests from some of the state's biggest corporations.
"We want to be in some place where people support job creation, which is attractive to talent, good cost of living, and it is supportive in what a high-tech exporter has to be all about," Immelt said in an interview.
The loss of GE is likely to be a huge blow to Connecticut, which bled thousands of jobs after the financial crisis and has been one of the slowest states to recover from the recession.
The state's gross domestic product grew less than 1 percent in 2014, compared with a 2.4 percent growth for the United States as a whole.