Yet another major Wall Street firm is poised to expand outside New York City – the latest blow to the Big Apple’s tax coffers thanks to Mayor Zohran Mandani’s war on wealthy residents and businesses, The Post has learned.
Private equity giant Apollo Global Management, headquartered in Manhattan, has decided to open a new business hub — internally dubbed its “second headquarters” — in either Florida or Texas with an official decision likely to be made public in the coming weeks, people close to the matter say.
The new outpost could eventually become home to as many as 1,000 employees over time – in line with Apollo’s current headcount in New York, the sources said. The buyout firm currently employs more than 6,000 worldwide.
Apollo – headed by billionaire CEO Marc Rowan – is currently scouting out space in Miami and in Palm Beach, where Apollo already has a small presence, according to the sources. In Texas, office space in Austin is also under consideration, the insiders said.
Apollo executives have been closely monitoring the policies of socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani and his vitriolic attacks on business leaders, most recently Ken Griffin, the CEO of the Citadel investment empire, which is in the middle of ramping up plans to build a $6 billion office tower on Park Avenue.
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Last month, Mamdani posted a video of himself standing outside Griffin’s Manhattan penthouse to tout his so-called pied-a-terre tax on second homes of rich people who live outside the city.
Speaking at the Milken Institute conference this week, Griffin called the stunt “creepy” and “frightening” given the toxic political climate that has included the 2024 assassination of the CEO of United Healthcare. He also said it has caused Citadel to rethink its planned massive expansion in Midtown and instead possibly expand resources and jobs to Miami, its current headquarters.
As The Post previously reported, Apollo in March alerted its employees in a memo that it plans “to establish a second headquarters in either Texas or south Florida, alongside NYC. This decision is driven by the talent we want to hire and the firm we want to be. New York does not have a monopoly on talent, and we expect most of our future growth will take place in our second HQ.“
The Apollo and Citadel announcements part of “a troubling pattern taking shape” in the city, said
Steve Fulop, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, a business lobby group.
“The solution is that the administration needs to have a real pro business agenda that has support of the broader business corporate community,” Fulop said. “We haven’t seen this yet and there is a sense of urgency to getting this going. It is a competitive landscape and without a strategy companies will look to more friendly places.”
In addition to warmer weather, both Texas and Florida have no state personal income taxes and pro growth policies that include low corporate income taxes. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have wooed NYC businesses in recent years as the political climate here has moved far to the left including massive tax increases and policing policies that have led to an uptick in violent crime.
Mamdani is currently pushing Governor Kathy Hochul to raise the state and city corporate income taxes to pay for his $127 billion budget that faces a $5 billion deficit. Hochul has already agreed to the pied-a-terre tax on second homes worth more than $5 million for non residents, but other tax increases are likely.
On Monday, Florida’s DeSantis, speaking to this reporter at the Milken Global Conference, called Mamdani “realtor of the year” for enacting policies that are driving taxpayers’ and businesses’ wealth to places like Florida and Texas.
Those businesses would include Citadel, which already in 2022 moved his HQ to Miami from Chicago, but also JP Morgan. Despite its swanky new HQ in midtown, Jamie Dimon’s mega bank now employs more people in Texas than New York. Goldman Sachs has greatly expanded its presence outside of the city as well.
