Copyright nypost
As Wall Street faces the prospect of left-wing firebrand Zohran Mamdani becoming the city’s next mayor, a fast-growing business hub down south is beckoning. Dallas — whose grab bag of major business moguls has included Ross Perot, Mark Cuban and Jerry Jones — has more recently become a major draw for big financial firms that were born and raised in the Big Apple. Goldman Sachs is building an 800,000-square-foot, $500 million campus in Dallas. It’s set to open in 2028 and consolidate over 5,000 employees. Last year, the mega bank hired Robert Kaplan, the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, as its vice chairman. Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase now employs 31,000 in Texas — more than its 24,000 staffers in New York. That’s despite the fact that the bank just opened a $3 billion Park Avenue headquarters designed by British superstar architect Norman Foster. “It shouldn’t have been that way, but Texas loves you being there,” CEO Jamie Dimon told Bloomberg in 2023. Two years later, Wall Street is feeling less love than ever from the Big Apple, as voters are poised to elect a Uganda-born mayoral candidate who has long dabbled in “defund the police” rhetoric and who has pledged to raise taxes on the wealthy. Fortress Investment Group co-CEO Drew McKnight, who joined the $53 billion asset manager in 2005, told The Post in an exclusive interview that officials have also moved quickly to slash red tape and make the switch more attractive “New York is still the financial capital of the US and one of the financial capitals of the world … But Texas can compete,” the 47-year-old Goldman Sachs alum said from the firm’s 50,000-square-foot headquarters in Dallas that’s part of what US financiers have dubbed “Y’all Street.” The Post reported on Oct. 22 how McKnight was concerned about how mayoral frontrunner Mamdani could upend the city’s real estate market with his rent-freeze agenda. The firm remains incorporated in New York but has expanded rapidly in Texas since 2021. Other Wall Street giants are following suit. Dallas accounts for 384,000 financial sector jobs, trailing New York as the second-biggest hub in the country. But data compiled by Big Apple business power broker Kathryn Wylde found that Texas had 519,000 financial sector employees in 2024, above the 507,000 financial services workers across the state of New York. Texas has constitutionally banned financial transaction taxes and created specialized business courts; both moves are designed to attract capital from traditional coastal commercial centers. “Texas has made it really easy to do business and really easy to hire,” McKnight said. “It’s not just the tax regime — it’s permitting, decision-making, and speed.” He pointed to the example of MP Materials, a Fortress-backed rare earths producer that broke ground on a magnet manufacturing plant in Fort Worth in 2023 and began operations just 18 months later. “From shovels in the ground in May of ’23 to operating by Thanksgiving of ’24,” the Fortress veteran said. “That timeline would be unthinkable elsewhere.” “I’ve heard some folks who made the New York-to-Miami move that have since moved back,” McKnight said. “We’ve had no one come to Dallas and move back.” Dallas also offers a major quality-of-life advantage over older financial centers; data compiled by the St Louis Fed found that the average commute time is just 27 minutes. The city’s central location, with both coasts reachable in just over three hours by plane, also makes it a strategic base for firms with national operations. As for culture and lifestyle — often cited by some Wall Streeters as reasons to resist leaving New York — McKnight said the city is more than keeping pace. “There are too many great restaurants coming in,” he said, citing Carbone and Mr. Charles as favorites. “Your ability to go see sports and live music is fantastic.” McKnight’s advice to young bankers or executives considering a move was straightforward: “You don’t sacrifice anything by being in Dallas versus being in New York,” he said. “From a business perspective, it’s easy. From a lifestyle perspective, it’s better.” For now, McKnight sees the Texas trend not as an exodus but an evolution. “Things would have to change a lot for us not to want a strong presence in New York,” he said. “But Dallas isn’t just catching up — it’s competing.”
