Paul Singer is taking his talents to West Palm Beach.
The billionaire is moving the headquarters of his hedge fund, Elliott Management, from Midtown Manhattan to West Palm, adding to a trend of financial firms setting up shop in South Florida, according to Bloomberg.
While Florida has no state income tax, a major motivator of the relocation appears to be that Singer’s co-chief investment officer and expected successor, Jon Pollock, relocated to his West Palm home during the pandemic. Other senior executives at Elliott Management have also moved to Florida full-time, Bloomberg reported.
Elliott Management, based at 40 West 57th Street, will still keep a presence in New York and will also open an office in Greenwich, Connecticut. It is unclear how many of the firm’s 466 employees will move to Florida. Singer himself will continue to spend most of his time in the Northeast, including at his apartment on the Upper West Side, the New York Times reported.
Company executives are hoping that opening an office in South Florida can help the firm attract more talent in the future, according to Bloomberg.
Elliott’s move will increase hedge fund assets in Florida by more than half, according to data from research firm Preqin, Bloomberg reported.
The move follows Carl Icahn’s investment firm’s relocation to Sunny Isles, Florida. Ken Griffin’s Citadel also plans to open a Miami office next year, according to Bloomberg.
Many hedge funders own second homes in Miami Beach or Palm Beach, but few have migrated to South Florida year-round and even fewer companies have moved their corporate headquarters from the Northeast.
In many cases, the firms that have moved south have only opened small offices rather than relocate the majority of their employees. This includes the hedge fund of billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, who opened an office on Banker’s Row in Palm Beach in 2016 shortly after buying an estate on the tony island for $70 million.
[Bloomberg] — Keith Larsen