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Wall Street is flocking to Florida
While California's tech elite are packing up their bags for the Lone Star State, New York's financiers are trading in skyscrapers for sunshine in Florida.
Hedge fund Elliott Management is moving its headquarters to West Palm Beach. Its cochief investment officer, Jon Pollock, has reportedly been living in his West Palm Beach home during the pandemic. Charles Schwab, founder of the eponymous brokerage and asset-management giant, also relocated to Palm Beach this year, voting-registration records show.
Blackstone, the world's largest private-equity firm, headquartered on Park Avenue in Manhattan, is opening an office in Miami with plans to bring as many as 215 technology-focused jobs there. More recently, Goldman Sachs has been considering plans to shift asset-management operations out of New York, Bloomberg first reported.
Business Insider recently spoke with 13 finance and real-estate professionals about Florida's ascendant appeal amid the pandemic, many of whom described an uptick in bigger and longer office-space leases by out-of-state firms and high-end real estate inventory running low as Big Apple financiers flood the area.
Stephen Rutchik, Colliers' executive managing director of office services for the South Florida region, had told Business Insider during these talks that low taxes, warmer weather, and a low-key vibe had lured financial services firms in recent years.
But interest really popped off in July, he said, when the industry had become more comfortable with remote work. Rutchik said his team is seeing unprecedented interest, with the call volume from prospective tenants increasing "overnight" to "torrential" levels.
"We're touring hedge funds on our agency side one to three times a day," he added.
And Cuomo still killed all the old people anyway. Great job. Give that man an award.