That said, New York has seen domestic competition gnaw away at its finance supremacy.
Dallas; Atlanta; Nashville, Tennessee; and Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina, are among the cities drawing companies away from the home of Wall Street, said Mark Williams, who advises companies on location-planning as president of Strategic Development Group.
Securities-industry jobs have fallen about 7% in New York state since 2000, while rising more than 5% in the country as a whole, according to Labor Department data.
“I don’t think we’re going to see a mass exodus from New York or Chicago, but we’re going to see more and more of this,” Williams said.
Goldman Sachs is considering creating a base for its asset management arm in Florida, which boasts no income tax and a mild climate, hurricane season notwithstanding. Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp. plans to move its headquarters to West Palm Beach from midtown Manhattan.
Other investing powerhouses, such as Blackstone Group Inc. and Ken Griffin’s Citadel, have been bulking up their presence in the state, and Moelis Chief Executive Officer Ken Moelis said this week that his firm will support bankers who move to Florida, and will consider opening or expanding offices outside New York as staff relocate.
While China has handled Covid-19 more thoroughly -- and ruthlessly -- than the U.S. and U.K., Hong Kong has issues of its own. The former British colony is caught between Beijing’s shifting priorities and the freewheeling markets at China’s doorstep that have provided the city’s raison d’etre.
“Financial institutions in Hong Kong are finding themselves in a tricky situation,” said Benjamin Quinlan, CEO at strategy-consulting firm Quinlan & Associates in the city. “However, there is likely to be increasingly more focus on integrating with the mainland, capitalizing on China’s stronger macroeconomic-growth story.”
A crackdown by Beijing this year on democratic leaders and institutions -- a response to 2019 protests that virtually shut down the city -- is putting finance companies such as HSBC Holdings Plc in a bind. Just this week, the London-based lender was criticized for freezing the accounts of a former pro-democracy lawmaker and a local church that’s helped protesters.
Office-property prices in Central, the city’s main business district, fell by almost 27% in the third quarter from the start of the year, data from CBRE Group Inc. show. Vacancies are also at a record in prime areas, with the rate in Central at 6.9% in October, according to Colliers International Group Inc.