Billionaire Ken Griffin will move his Citadel investment firm to Miami
KEN GRIFFIN BECOMES THE LATEST IN A SERIES OF HIGH-PROFILE CEOS TO MOVE CORPORATE OPERATIONS OR EXPAND TO THE MIAMI AREA.
hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin first moved some employees to South Florida in March 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then the Florida native purportedly shelled out $75 million in December 2021 for a house on Star Island, shattering the record for Miami-Dade County.
Now, Griffin’s moving the headquarters of his Citadel investment firm to Miami after 32 years in Chicago, he said Thursday. And he plans to build an office tower in the pricey Brickell financial district to house it.
“Miami is a vibrant, growing metropolis that embodies the American Dream — embracing the possibilities of what can be achieved by a community working to build a future together,” Griffin, 53, wrote in a letter to employees announcing the corporate move.
“I am excited to have recently moved to Miami with my family and look forward to rapidly expanding Citadel in a city so rich in diversity and abounding with energy,” he wrote in the letter, which Citadel released publicly.
Griffin, also a major Chicago philanthropist and GOP donor, becomes the latest in a series of high-profile CEOs to move corporate operations or expand to the Miami area. The trend, which began early in the ongoing pandemic and includes elite financial firms Thoma Bravo, Goldman Sachs and Blackstone, shows few signs of abating. Recently, a pair of national law firms, Kirkland & Ellis and Winston & Strawn, announced they’re expanding to Miasions mi, drawn by the stream of finance, technology and e-commerce firms moving into the city.
The corporate arrivals have been broadly welcomed by city officials and boosters who have long been looking to diversify and expand Miami-Dade County’s predominantly low-wage service economy. The affluent newcomers, however, have driven housing prices and apartment rents to record highs and supplies to a low, exacerbating an already severe home-affordability crisis. A report this year suggested competition for office space has also driven commercial rentals to prices surpassing $100 a square foot — comparable to Manhattan — in places such as the Brickell neighborhood in Miami.
An executive at the Beacon Council, Miami-Dade’s economic-development agency, said the Citadel move will be among the most significant of new corporate arrivals given its size — the hedge fund manages more than $50 billion in assets — and its prominence as one of the nation’s most successful investment firms.
“This is a really big announcement for Miami,” said James Kohnstamm, who is executive vice president for economic development at the council and noted the group has been helping Citadel executives choose relocation sites in the Miami area.
“This is a headquarters relocation of a major private-equity firm. It will have ripple effects across real estate, across talent acquisition, across housing. These are definitely the type of announcements and commitments crucial to the sustainability of our economy.”
In Griffin’s case, the personal and business deciBillionaire
to move were motivated not just by Miami’s newfound allure — and, presumably, the tax advantages conferred to affluent corporate titans from moving to a state with no income tax — but also his public unhappiness with Illinois politics and rising crime in Chicago.
Griffin — whose net worth is reported to be as much as nearly $30 billion, making him one of the 50 wealthiest people in the world — complained last month in an interview with Bloomberg News that the city’s crime situation was not improving and his employees were being affected.
“We’re getting to the point that if things don’t change, we’re gone,” Griffin was quoted as saying.
A Citadel spokesman confirmed Thursday to the Miami Herald the city’s crime problem was a factor in Griffin’s decision to leave Chicago, where he founded the company in 1990.
“Our employees and the people we’re recruiting want to live in cities where they feel safe,” Citadel spokesman Zia Ahmed said. “And we’ve had trouble hiring because of the violence.”
The move to Miami will involve headquarters employees for the Citadel hedge fund as well as Citadel Securities, its electronictrading arm, and has already begun, the company said. Citadel Securities employees who had been working temporarily at the Four Seasons Palm Beach hotel since the start of the pandemic in early 2020 are now based at downtown Miami’s Southeast Financial Center tower.
The full employee and operations relocation will take place over several years, Citadel said. The company has engaged Chicago developer Sterling Bay to build a Brickell office tower that would serve as Citadel’s and Citadel Securities’ new home office. A site has not yet been publicly identified.
Both companies have over 1,000 employees in Illinois. How many will work in Miami is not yet known, though the company said it expects “a few hundred” will be based in Miami by next year. Citadel will retain a presence in Chicago, the company said.
Griffin, who was born in Daytona Beach and attended middle school and high school in Boca Raton, also might have decided to leave Chicago partly for political reasons. He has been critical of Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat and fellow billionaire who is running for reelection. Griffin has been giving millions to Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard Irvin, who is polling 15 points behind in the
GOP primary.
Politically, Griffin would be more at home in Florida. Even though he has sometimes donated to Democratic candidates, he’s a top Republican Party donor and spent $66 million to support conservatives in the 2020 elections, placing him in the top five of party donors, according to OpenSecrets.org.
Griffin also has made significant political donations to Florida’s sitting U.S. senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, as well as Gov. Ron DeSantis. But he has been critical of former President Donald Trump, saying he wouldn’t vote for him if he runs again.
Through the years, Griffin has given hefty donations to a variety of organizations in Chicago. Citadel put the sum of his gifts there at $600 million. Among the recipients of multimillion-dollar Griffin gifts have been Chicago’s famed Lakefront Trail, museums and the University of Chicago, as well as other cultural, medical and civic groups.
Already, he has started making sizable donations in South Florida.
Last year, Griffin donated $5 million toward development of The Underline, the 10-mile linear park and trail under construction beneath Miami’s elevated Metrorail line. He made another $5 million gift to help launch Miami Connect, an effort to provide needy Miami-Dade households with free high-speed internet. Griffin also gave $20 million toward the recently completed expansion of the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach.
That track record of giving might bode well for Miami, the Beacon Council’s Kohnstamm said. Because it has few corporate headquarters and doesn’t boast a long tradition of big private giving, the relatively young Miami has lacked the level of corporate and private philanthropy often enjoyed by other, older large U.S. cities.
Griffin’s arrival could help change that, Kohnstamm said.
“That’s the kind of leadership we want to see from our corporate citizens,” he said of the Harvard University graduate who started his first investment venture from his freshman dorm room.
Griffin made national news last year when he secured ownership of a rare copy of the Constitution, one of 13 printed originals still in existence. His winning $43.2 million bid set a record for the most money
paid at auction for a printed text.
The billionaire also has a well-documented penchant for acquiring extravagantly expensive homes in the United States and abroad. His estimated $1 billion of residential property holdings include a $238 million penthouse in Manhattan and a $122 million London mansion.
He has spent even more — a tidy $350 million — to assemble a 20-acre estate stretching from the Intracoastal Waterway to the Atlantic Ocean in the town of Palm Beach.
In January, a well-informed source identified Griffin to the Miami Herald as the record-setting mystery buyer of a 14,785square-foot Star Island estate. The property owner is listed on the county property appraiser’s website as a limited liability company that’s not found in Florida state records. Citadel declined to confirm that Griffin is the buyer or to say where in Miami he is living with his family.
But the Star Island property lists a homestead property-tax exemption, meaning the owner is legally required to be living at the house as a primary residence.
Griffin might be connected to a pair of adjoining vacant lots as well. The two vacant properties were bought by 11 Star Island LLC for $25 million and
$37 million in November 2020 and August 2020, county property records show.