Billionaire Ken Griffin said his hedge fund’s Chicago footprint will shrink to just two floors as crime, taxes and other challenges push employees to relocate to Miami and New York.
“Chicago, you know, over the last, unfortunately, over the last six or seven years, has been engulfed in a series of problems,” Griffin said at the Citadel Securities Future of Global Markets conference in New York on Oct. 6.
The Windy City, which served as Citadel’s headquarters for more than 30 years, has seen much of the company’s workforce and operations shift south to Miami in recent years.
Griffin, who is worth $50 billion according to Forbes, relocated his company’s global headquarters to Florida in 2022.
“Asking people to leave Chicago for New York or Miami has not been hard. We’ve gone from probably 1,300 people in Chicago to a few hundred. From being the primary tenant of one of the largest skyscrapers to, I think we will be down to two floors in a year,” he explained.
Griffin, who leads the world’s most profitable hedge fund, said that the departure of so many longtime employees underscores Illinois’ mounting economic and social problems.
“I think the sad part of the story is how many people who had built lives in Chicago were willing to walk away from that and move to Miami or New York, just given the challenges that Illinois has faced,” he said.
Griffin added that Chicago’s crime remains one of the city’s most pressing challenges.
His comments come as President Donald Trump renews his push for a federal crackdown on crime in major US cities, a plan that includes deploying troops to some Democrat-led areas experiencing rising violence.
The president’s push to deploy National Guard troops nationwide has ignited repeated clashes with Democratic governors and mayors.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has been among the most vocal critics, condemning Trump’s deployment of troops and federal agents into Chicago.
Trump has also threatened to extend deployments to other cities, including Baltimore and New Orleans. Troops have already been sent to Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Portland and Memphis.
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