Chicago knows what happens when Ken Griffin turns on a city, now Mamdani may find out
here is no clearer example of what happens when billionaire Ken Griffin turns on a city than Chicago, a blueprint now playing out in New York.The Citadel founder is clashing...
By Fox News · Fox News
here is no clearer example of what happens when billionaire Ken Griffin turns on a city than Chicago, a blueprint now playing out in New York. The Citadel founder is clashing with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani over taxes targeting the ultra-wealthy and intensifying crime, reviving the same tensions that drove him to pull his business and billions out of Chicago. Griffin, worth about $50 billion according to Forbes, moved the firm’s global headquarters from Chicago to Miami in 2022 , a departure that showed how quickly jobs, investment and influence can follow when a major financial player leaves. The move marked Griffin's break from Chicago , where he built one of the world’s most powerful hedge fund and market-making operations, which helped cement the city’s status as a global financial hub. MAMDANI’S RISE IN NYC MIRRORS ECONOMIC FLIGHT TO THE SOUTH, STUDY SHOWS The Windy City, which served as Citadel's home for more than 30 years, has seen much of the firm’s workforce shift south, with the office going from roughly 1,300 employees to a few hundred and still shrinking. "Asking people to leave Chicago for New York or Miami has not been hard," Griffin said at a conference in New York on Oct. 6. "Chicago, over the past six or seven years, has been engulfed in a series of problems," he said, pointing to crime as one of the city’s most pressing challenges, along with broader economic and policy concerns weighing on employees’ willingness to stay. BILLIONAIRE KEN GRIFFIN SAYS CITADEL’S CHICAGO EXODUS WAS ‘NOT HARD,’ CITES CRIME, TAXES "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 added. For Chicago, the result has been a steady erosion of one of its most prominent corporate anchors — shrinking office space, relocating employees and the departure of a billionaire who once poured hundreds of millions into t…