JPMorgan Chase is rapidly expanding in Florida after a number of other Wall Street firms moved operations from New York to the Sunshine State, CEO Jaime Dimon has revealed.
“We love Florida, we grow left and right in Florida,” Dimon shared Bloomberg television on the sidelines of a JPMorgan conference in Miami on Monday.
“Florida likes business, they want you to come,” he added. “Texas is like that.”
Florida has seen a recent influx of financial services firms as workers and their wealthy clients increasingly choose to move to the state, citing Governor Ron DeSantis’s low taxes and perceived business-friendly policies.
But some Floridians are outraged by the move, with affluent residents saying their new neighbors are “rude.”
JPMorgan Chase is rapidly expanding in Florida, following a number of other Wall Street firms that moved operations from New York to the Sunshine State, CEO Jaime Dimon said
A Chase branch is seen in Miami. “We love Florida, we’re growing left and right in Florida,” CEO Jaime Dimon said in a new interview
Goldman Sachs has opened a major new office in West Palm Beach, and last year Ken Griffin’s hedge fund, Citadel, moved its headquarters from Chicago to Miami.
Cathie Wood, CEO and chief investment officer of Ark Investment Management, has permanently closed the firm’s Manhattan office in favor of a move to St. Petersburg in 2021.
Hedge fund billionaires and native New Yorkers Paul Singer and Carl Icahn have also moved their respective businesses to Florida in recent years.
“If you lead the state, you should think: How can I make the state prosperous for my people?” said Dimon.
“If I were a different state, I would think: Why do people like to go to these states? It’s their taxes, it’s their pro-business, they want a better life for their people,” he added.
“We now have more employees in Texas than in New York State. It shouldn’t have been, but Texas is thrilled to have you here,” the CEO said.
Dimon went on to describe Florida and Texas as “pro-America, upbeat, pro-business,” and when asked if New York was the same, he said “no, unfortunately.”
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Texas and Florida, both of which do not collect individual state taxes, have experienced large population increases.
A map shows the percentage change in the state population from 2020 to 2020
Art Deco District of Miami Beach can be seen in an archive photo. Florida has added 707,000 residents since 2020, representing a 3.3% gain
From April 2020 to July 2022, the Lone Star State grew by 884,000, or 3%, while the Sunshine State added 707,000 residents, representing a gain of 3.3%.
During the same period, New York and California, which are also among the largest states by population, saw the largest net population declines, each losing more than 500,000.
The shifts reflect an internal migration of substantial proportions, fueling the South’s explosive population growth, which could have economic and political consequences for decades to come.
Experts cite a confluence of factors including the rise of remote work, pandemic health fears in densely populated urban areas and concerns about housing costs, high taxes and crime as driving a surge of internal migration to Sun Belt states.
New York not only lost the largest number of residents during the two pandemic years, but also shrank at the fastest rate, with a 2.6% decline.
A Zogby survey conducted last year found that high taxes were by far the top reason New York residents cited for considering leaving the state, followed by better job opportunities and the state’s political climate.
In 2022 alone, Florida grew at the fastest rate, with an annual population increase of 1.9%, increasing the total population to 22,244,823.
“While Florida has often been among the states with the highest gains, this was the first time since 1957 that Florida was the state with the largest percentage increase in population,” said Kristie Wilder, a demographer with the Census Bureau’s Population Division. .
Some Floridians are outraged by the move, claiming their new neighbors are being “rude” and stretching local infrastructure.
‘People do their own thing here, go out and go home early. Now there’s so much rudeness,” Shannon Donnelly, a columnist for the Palm Beach Daily News, told the New York Post.
“There are objections to parking spaces and waitresses cry. One is lively and the other loud and unruly.’
Real estate agent Francie Leidy said the big city visitors even drive as if they were on the streets of Manhattan, filling the quiet Florida city with car horns and aggressive driving.
“It took me 30 minutes to cross the bridge – and what about all that honking?” she told the Post.
Yana Schlesinger, whose husband owns the Brazilian Court hotel, also notices that the presence of newcomers intrudes on her daily activities.
“I can’t get on a tennis court here anymore,” she told the Post. However, Schlesinger is not entirely angry with the Northerners marching into town.
“They bring life and energy to Palm Beach,” she said.
But according to residents, it’s not just the Palm Beach streets and top tennis courts that the newcomers are encroaching on, but also the private schools.
“Friends don’t even get their kids in one [private] school,” Leidy told the Post. “But we can all thank you for increasing our property values!”
.