Originally wrote by Jack Kelly for Forbes
Palm Beach, Fla.—Although New York still reigns supreme in asset management, Florida and Texas have
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Wall Street financial services firms are moving out of the Big Apple and relocating to the Sun Belt—a region of the United States generally considered stretching across the Southeast and Southwest—and taking nearly $1 trillion in assets under management with them, according to Bloomberg.
The flight out of New York has been underway since before the pandemic. Wall Street executives previously relocated thousands of jobs to states outside of New York, in an effort to cut costs.
About 158 financial institutions, managing $993 billion in assets, have established and aggressively staffed hubs in Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and other less expensive locations, according to data from 17,000 corporate filings compiled by Bloomberg.
The Mass Exodus
Following the leads of other major financial services firms, such as Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, UBS, Citigroup, AllianceBernstein and more, relocating to lower-cost areas, Wells Fargo is pouring investment into a two-tower, 850,000-square-foot campus in Irving, Texas. It's expected to house thousands of employees upon its completion in 2025.
During the pandemic, the absence of a state income tax, plus warm weather and business-friendly incentives, notably prompted hedge fund billionaires and native New Yorkers Paul Singer and Carl Icahn to relocate their respective businesses to Florida.
Ken Moelis, the CEO of his eponymous investment bank Moelis, told Bloomberg in 2020 that his bankers wanted to leave New York City for the Sunshine State. In response to their request, Moelis replied, “We’re a talent business. I want to attract, I want to motivate and I want to retain the greatest talent in the world. And if that talent wants to do it in Florida, that’s where we’ll support them.”
In 2021, ARK Investment Management CEO Cathie Wood moved her firm to St. Petersburg, Florida, where she felt the region’s “talent, innovative spirit and quality of life” would accelerate her company’s “growth initiatives.”
Source: Forbes.com
