Investor Watch: May 19, 2025

Genentech jumps on the North Carolina life sciences bandwagon. Clean energy and infrastructure are among the factors influencing TikTok to invest in Finland. Rivian invests in a supplier park near its Normal assembly plant.

INDUSTRIAL HEMP

Idaho’s innovative Hempitecture isn’t just blowing smoke.

OHIO

An Italian power transformer company’s CEO is among the influential decision-makers Ron Starner spoke to for this story chronicling the resurgence of manufacturing and of a younger worker population in small towns and in cities such as Dayton.

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Linamar, based in Guelph, Ontario, employs more than 32,000 people around the world.
Photo by JHVE Photo: Getty Images

Automotive News last week reported that Canadian automotive supplier Linamar, based in Guelph, Ontario, took over the equivalent of around US$144 million in contracts from other suppliers during Q1 2025, mostly driven by the fact that “virtually everything” Linamar ships to the United States is exempt from tariffs because the parts comply with the current U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

In an April 11 tariff update memo to shareholders, Chairperson Linda Hasenfratz, in a statement co-signed by CEO Jim Jarrell, wrote, “Establishment of a parts tariff would have an immediate negative impact on American based automakers and suppliers costing hundreds of thousands of jobs and we just don’t think that is what America wants.” Conversely, she wrote, continuing tariffs on Chinese goods could accrue to Linamar’s benefit, as the financial results have now shown. “Further I would say that despite media statements that globalization and free trade around the world are over that is absolutely not true,” Hasenfratz continued. “Free trade with the U.S. has been restricted, yes, and it is uncertain at this point, where that could end up. But free trade of every other country in the world can continue!” She also spoke to location decision-making:

“It is important in this timeframe to not panic, not get emotional and instead simply deal with the facts and the situation,” she wrote. “We are NOT contemplating closing facilities in tariff-affected countries and shifting production to the U.S. Tariffs can be implemented one day and removed the next, they are a short-term tactic. We make important decisions such as where to manufacture based on long-term fundamentals like availability of talent, bench strength, supply chain availability and costs in a region.”

Site Selection’s reporting on Linamar includes our report earlier this year about Linamar investing more than $704 million in six projects that will create more than 2,300 jobs. It also goes back to as long ago as 2006, when the company’s expansion plans were creating 3,000 jobs. The company today has over 32,000 employees in 75 manufacturing locations, 16 R&D centers and 31 sales offices in 19 countries in North and South America, Europe and Asia, which generated sales of C$10.6 billion (equivalent to nearly US$7.7 billion) in 2024.

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Last month the nonprofit Transamerica Institute and its Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies (TCRS) released “New Frontiers: Employers and the Evolving Workforce,” which found among other things that seven in 10 employers (72%) either currently use or plan to use robotics or AI to augment their human workforce and 43% believe their employees are worried that their job skills will no longer be needed. Whether the employers feel obliged to address those employees’ worries remains an open question.

“Employers’ visions for integrating these technologies have not fully translated into action plans for their workforce,” said Catherine Collinson, CEO and president of Transamerica Institute and TCRS. “But the message for workers is clear: Do your best to keep pace with changes that could affect your employability and identify alternative pathways, if needed.” While 85% of employers feel responsible for helping their employees keep their job skills up to date, the survey of more than 1,800 for-profit U.S. employers found, fewer than half (44%) cite talent development as a top workforce management priority.

The Transamerica Pyramid opened in 1972.
Photos by David Lipman courtesy of SHVO and Foster + Partners

Site Selection’s focus for 71 years has been on the perspective of the corporate end-user. That’s also the focus of an excellent feature written by Taylor Driscoll and published last week by Bisnow entitled “What Tenants Want: 4 Companies On What Drove Their Office Leasing Decisions This Year.” One of the deals involved space in the iconic Transamerica Pyramid tower in San Francisco (pictured), where renovations have uncovered a time capsule full of artifacts that make up part of a special exhibit about the history of the building that opened yesterday. After a $400 million redevelopment by real estate development and investment firm SHVO, the building was reopened last September.

“We were keenly aware of the site’s history and we wanted to document the process of building the pyramid and the controversy that surrounded it, as well as pay homage to its history,” said John Krizek, who served as public relations manager for the Transamerica Corporation, of the time capsule in a release last week. “The site was originally the waterfront of San Francisco during the 1849 Gold Rush and was later occupied for a century by the Montgomery Block, a legendary building that hosted all the early civic and political leaders, and later the artists and writers, who made San Francisco the centerpoint of the West.”

“Thanks to leaders like Michael Shvo we are seeing downtown come back to life with new energy and new investment,” said San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie last week in a release unveiling the Transamerica Pyramid’s time capsule exhibition. “Fifty years from now, my hope is that we will look back on this era — this exact moment in time — as the beginning of a new chapter for San Francisco.”

The view from the renovated SkyLounge in the Transamerica Pyramid