The future of Wall Street might just be located down the street, right here in Dallas.
The numbers speak for themselves. Texas has seen a 111% increase in the areas of investment banking and securities employment over the last two decades, while New York, the center of American finance, is only up 16%. In the nearly five years since the pandemic started, Texas is up 27% compared with 5% for New York. When it comes to employment figures, Texas has seen a 13% increase in the area of finance since 2019, while New York has only seen 2%.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, three of Wall Street’s biggest financial firms broke ground on new corporate campuses in Dallas-Fort Worth over the last 18 months. These include Wells Fargo & Co.’s new business hub in Irving, Bank of America’s new office high-rise in Uptown, and Goldman Sachs’ regional campus at the North End development Downtown.
“Right now, the smart money is on Dallas,” said Mayor Eric Johnson last year during the groundbreaking ceremony of Goldman’s new 800,000-square-foot office building in October, the Dallas Business Journal reported.
The Wall Street Journal reports on Texas’ growth as a financial hub as businesses and residents continue to choose the state for its lower taxes and housing costs. Here’s the start of the story:
DALLAS—Ross Perot Jr. gestured out the window as his helicopter circled a 4.5-acre pit alongside the skyline of downtown Dallas. Texas and U.S. flags hung from a crane within it.
The site is where Perot’s real-estate investment company, Hillwood, is partnering to build a $500 million Goldman Sachs tower for more than 5,000 bankers and investors. That will make it the financial firm’s second-largest office, behind New York. As the helicopter swung northwest, windows glinted from two unfinished Wells Fargo office towers, scheduled to open next year. A bit farther away: a fourth office building under construction for Charles Schwab, which moved its headquarters from California to the Dallas area five years ago, and the footprint of a Deloitte campus doubling in size.
The sprawling landscape illustrates an expansion that has brought to North Texas a presence in financial services that now sits second only to New York City in the U.S. And growth of so-called Y’all Street is accelerating.
“It’s stunning to watch,” said Perot, a Dallas native and son of the former presidential candidate, of the phenomenon other investors termed a finance invasion. “You’re really seeing a whole new North Texas ecosystem.”
