For the better part of a century, the geography of US hedge fund and financial services activity followed a predictable pattern: New York for everything, Connecticut’s Gold Coast for hedge funds, and Chicago for derivatives. The decade preceding the pandemic introduced some cosmetic diversification — scattered family offices in Florida, a trickle of venture capital into Austin — but the gravitational center of US finance remained firmly within commuting distance of Midtown Manhattan, a structural reality that had persisted for half a century.
By the close of 2022, that structure had undergone a genuine transformation. Not a collapse, not an inversion — New York continued to dominate the US financial services industry by virtually every metric. But the ten percentage points of AUM concentration that migrated away from the New York-Connecticut-Illinois corridor between 2019 and 2022 represented hundreds of billions of dollars in managed assets and, more critically for the talent market, thousands of senior finance professionals who were no longer tethered to those traditional hubs.
What actually moved and why
The geographic redistribution of US finance unfolded through three distinct channels worth differentiating, as each carries different implications for senior talent markets.
Tax-residency migration without operational migration. The first wave, which gained momentum after the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act imposed SALT deduction caps, centered on establishing Florida or Texas residency for tax optimization while preserving substantive professional operations in New York. A hedge fund manager spending 206 days per year in Miami and 159 in New York has technically relocated, but their professional network, deal flow, and key relationships remain New York-anchored. This category generated real geographic mobility on paper but produced limited change in the talent market dynamics of any individual city.
Operational center-of-gravity shifts. The second wave, accelerated by COVID-era remote-work normalization, involved genuine relocation of operational centers of gravity. When Citadel transferred its headquarters from Chicago to Miami in 2022, it meant the investment committee, portfolio management function, and daily operations were physically moving — not merely the tax residency of founding partners. This category is what genuinely reshapes talent markets, because it demands building or accessing deep local talent pools rather than simply adjusting a tax schedule.
New firm formation in new geographies. The third wave is less conspicuous but arguably the most consequential over the long term: new financial services firms established from scratch in non-New York locations. A Series A fintech launched in Austin in 2021 carries no New York legacy, recruits locally, develops its network locally, and incrementally deepens the pool of senior finance talent in Austin independent of any migration narrative. This category accumulates slowly but compounds meaningfully over time.
The Florida dynamic in 2022
By the end of 2022, Florida represented the most compelling chapter in the geographic reshaping of US finance. The state had expanded from hosting roughly 26 investment management firms of note in 2019 to a cluster of over 82 by late 2022. The AUM associated with those firms had grown from an estimated $62 billion to over $412 billion in a three-year period — driven primarily by hedge fund and family office relocations rather than new firm formation.
The compensation picture in Florida at the close of 2022 was nuanced: headline figures ran meaningfully below New York equivalents in gross terms (typically a 15% to 25% gap for comparable VP-level finance roles) but frequently proved superior in net disposable income for professionals in the highest income brackets, once state income tax differentials and housing costs were properly factored in. We covered the detailed math in our Miami piece.
The talent pool challenge was already apparent: Miami had absorbed a substantial wave of senior finance migration but had not yet cultivated a deep local talent pool for the most specialized roles. The majority of searches we conducted for Miami-based hedge fund positions in 2022 required national candidate pools. This dynamic persisted through 2023 and 2024.
Texas in 2022
Texas in 2022 presented a more measured finance narrative than Florida, largely because the Citadel announcement involved a Chicago-to-Miami relocation rather than a New York-to-Texas move. The Texas financial services story in 2022 was propelled primarily by the Dallas-Fort Worth market, where Goldman Sachs had announced its major campus and Charles Schwab had completed its relocation from San Francisco. While AUM figures trailed Florida, the corporate-finance and wealth-management infrastructure was arguably already more mature.
We placed 14 senior finance professionals in Texas in 2022, up from 6 in 2021 and effectively zero in 2019. The roles were almost exclusively in Dallas-Fort Worth, almost exclusively at companies with deep New York or California roots, and almost exclusively involved candidates who had previously worked in those markets and were choosing Texas primarily for quality-of-life and tax reasons rather than because the professional opportunity was better than what they could find elsewhere.
What this meant for senior talent
For senior finance professionals, the industry’s geographic diversification opened distinct opportunities. The most sought-after candidates in 2022 were those who combined strong New York institutional finance credentials with genuine willingness to operate from non-New York locations. Companies establishing Miami or Dallas operations sought proven talent but couldn’t always attract it from New York given the compensation differential. Candidates who bridged this gap — possessing both the institutional credentials and the geographic flexibility — frequently negotiated exceptionally strong packages featuring enhanced equity, elevated sign-on bonuses, and more senior titles specifically designed to offset the perceived career risk of relocating to a thinner market.
Looking ahead
The 2022 story set the trajectory that played out through 2023, 2024, and into 2025. Florida continued to grow, Texas continued to develop, and the "finance anywhere" norm continued to spread. The specific current state of the compensation and talent markets in each of these geographies is covered in our Texas market piece and Miami piece, both of which use our 2025-2026 placement data.
The competitive dynamics for talent
The geographic diversification of US finance produced distinctive competitive dynamics that unfolded in revealing ways for senior talent. Companies establishing new operations in Miami, Austin, or Dallas in 2022 confronted the challenge of competing for talent against both incumbent institutions in those markets and the New York and Chicago firms simultaneously working to retain the same professionals.
The most effective approach, based on our placement experience, was direct: present an explicit and detailed total compensation picture encompassing tax advantages, housing differentials, and lifestyle factors, rather than expecting candidates to calculate the math independently. Companies that prepared detailed, specific total-compensation analyses comparing net-of-tax, net-of-housing disposable income between their market and the candidate’s current market consistently outperformed those that relied on vague lifestyle appeals and presented salary figures 15% below New York benchmarks.
Sign-on bonuses also assumed outsized importance during this market transition: companies needed to compensate candidates for unvested equity and near-term bonuses being forfeited at New York and Chicago firms, plus the transaction costs of relocation including real estate commissions, closing costs, and moving expenses. Sign-on packages for VP-level geographic relocations to Miami and Dallas in 2022 ran, in our data, 40% to 70% above the sign-ons for purely local non-relocation hires at comparable levels.
Institutional dynamics: which firms moved operations vs. just people
Not all geographic moves in 2022 represented equivalent commitments to the new markets. Distinguishing between categories is essential for senior professionals assessing which geographic opportunities merit serious consideration.
The most durable opportunities originated from firms that relocated genuine operational infrastructure, not merely office addresses. When Citadel transferred its headquarters to Miami, it relocated investment committee decision-making, technology infrastructure, and the operational resources necessary to run a global asset management firm from a new base. When Goldman Sachs committed to a major Dallas campus, it planned to house thousands of employees there with operational functions designed to anchor the presence through management transitions.
The least durable opportunities came from superficial expansions: a small satellite office staffed by a senior partner who spent two months per year there, with no operational infrastructure, no local recruiting pipeline, and no genuine intention of shifting the center of gravity away from New York. These offices frequently shuttered within two years, stranding the senior professionals who had made geographic decisions based on their existence.
For the current state of the Miami and Texas markets that grew from this 2022 foundation, see our detailed analyses in Miami’s rise as a finance hub and the Texas hiring market.