A wave of hiring in Florida by financial-services firms is the topic of a fine article in Bloomberg Businessweek. It reports that "in Deutsche Bank's case, the Jacksonville campus has grown into the company's second-largest U.S. location. The bank has about 2,000 employees there—up from 1,400 in 2013—and plans to add more in 2017."
Also:
According to Jones Lang LaSalle, high-end corporate office space in Jacksonville can be leased for about $22 a square foot, cheaper than all but four major U.S. cities tracked by the company. That's about a quarter the rate in New York. Banks pay Jacksonville employees about 30 percent less on average than those in New York, according to Cathy Chambers, a senior vice president with the JaxUSA Partnership, a division of the local chamber of commerce. A financial analyst, for example, might earn $67,000 in Jacksonville, compared with $99,700 in New York....
Jerry Mallot, president of JaxUSA, brushes aside criticism that Jacksonville can't cater to big-city tastes... Companies are eager to establish operations in a place with year-round sunshine and no state income tax, Mallot says.
Other recent data points supporting the idea of a Florida boom:
A Fall 2016 article in Philanthropy magazine about Bruce and Suzie Kovner reports: "Bruce and Suzie married in 2007. Their main home is in Florida, and they also have a home in Manhattan." (Mr. Kovner, who built and ran the Caxton hedge fund, was one of my partners in the New York Sun.)
The money manager Bill Miller, in a recent interview with Bloomberg View's Barry Ritholtz, says, "I split my time between Florida and Maryland and New York."
Earlier FutureOfCapitalism items have reported on hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman's move to Florida and hedge fund manager David Tepper's move to Florida.
And the New York Times food section, meanwhile, reports on the opening of a new glatt kosher deli in Miami operated by a guy who is also going to start baking bialys there. This is arguably not directly related to the boom in financial services. But when not only the money management industry traditionally associated with New York but even the cuisine starts surfacing in a newsworthy fashion in the Sunshine State — well, something is happening.
