Lenovo to lease former Sony Ericsson campus in RTP

By David Bracken of the News & Observer

After completing its purchase of IBM’s low-end server business, Lenovo plans to relocate the unit’s local employees to the former corporate campus of Sony Ericsson in Research Triangle Park.

Gerry Smith, who leads Lenovo’s Americas group, announced the pending move in an email to employees that was obtained by The News & Observer. Lenovo will occupy both office buildings on the old Ericsson campus, which combined contain 450,000 square feet.

Lenovo also plans to build an additional 30,000 square feet of office space, according to Smith’s email. The campus will be home to Lenovo’s Enterprise Business Group.

The deal is a major win for Rubenstein Partners, the Philadelphia-based real estate firm that acquired the Ericsson buildings and the 67-acre campus on which the buildings sit for $26 million in December.

About 7,500 IBM employees are expected to shift to Lenovo when the PC maker completes its $2.3 billion acquisition of a line of servers from IBM.

Lenovo is already the largest tenant in Perimeter Park, the Duke Realty office park in Morrisville where it has 2,200 employees and leases 468,000 square feet. Lenovo, which has about 2,500 employees in North Carolina, has said its presence in the state will nearly double as a result of the IBM acquisition.

Lenovo said in January when the IBM deal was announced that it expects it to be completed in six to nine months, pending regulatory approval.

The company is restructuring itself as a result of the IBM deal. The new structure replaces the company’s two existing business groups with four: PC, Mobile, Enterprise, and Ecosystem and Cloud Services.

The Enterprise group will be led by Smith and will include IBM’s x86 server business as well as data storage devices.