Apollo Global Management has chosen Austin, Texas, as the site for its second U.S. headquarters, bypassing New York City and delivering another blow to a municipal government that keeps losing major employers to low-tax Southern states. The firm, which controls more than $800 billion in assets, narrowed its search to Texas and Florida before settling on Austin, the New York Post reported, citing a Financial Times report published Friday.
The decision lands squarely on Mayor Zohran Mamdani's watch. Apollo currently runs its operations from a Midtown tower at 9 W. 57th St., with views over Central Park. But the Marc Rowan-led powerhouse wants a major base far from Manhattan, and far from the political environment Mamdani has built.
Apollo told the Financial Times the move is about talent. The firm wants to recruit workers who do not want to live in New York or pay New York prices. That framing is polite. The subtext is harder to miss: a company that paid $1.276 billion in income taxes in 2025, up from $1.062 billion the year before, has decided the nation's largest city is no longer worth the cost.
Apollo is not alone. Citadel, led by CEO Ken Griffin, has doubled down on expanding outside New York. Goldman Sachs is building a $500 million office tower in Dallas. Wells Fargo opened an 850,000-square-foot campus outside Dallas. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq have both opened Texas outposts. And the Texas Stock Exchange plans to start trading this summer.
Steve Fulop, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, previously told the Post that the Apollo and Citadel moves are part of something bigger.
"The solution is that the administration needs to have a real pro business agenda that has support of the broader business corporate community. We haven't seen this yet and there is a sense of urgency to getting this going. It is a competitive landscape and without a strategy companies will look to more friendly places."
Fulop called it "a troubling pattern taking shape." That is a diplomatic way to describe what is happening. Firms managing hundreds of billions of dollars are looking at New York's tax burden, its regulatory climate, and its political leadership, and choosing to build elsewhere.
The city stands to lose a significant revenue stream. Apollo's filings do not break down how much of its income taxes went specifically to New York City, but a firm of that scale generates substantial local tax obligations, and every headquarters employee who relocates takes spending, property tax revenue, and economic activity along.
Apollo narrowed its choices to Texas and Florida. It chose Austin over apparent concerns about the lack of private schools in Florida, a detail that says something about the kind of employees Apollo is trying to attract and retain. Austin offered a better fit.
The Texas capital has boomed as a tech hub, especially through the pandemic. Meta, Google, and Oracle all expanded there. Austin also hosts the fund that manages the University of Texas system's $80 billion-plus endowment and is home to the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, deep-pocketed institutional investors that give the city a built-in financial ecosystem.
Texas itself has been rolling out the welcome mat. The state has no income tax. It passed laws to lure companies to reincorporate there and opened special courts for business disputes. Vanguard and Fidelity have been drawn by the combination of low taxes and lighter regulation. Elon Musk moved his companies to Texas and urged other bosses to follow.
The contrast with New York is stark. While Texas builds infrastructure to attract capital, New York City's progressive political class has spent its energy on ideological projects that make the business climate worse.
Mayor Mamdani has made himself a target. He singled out Ken Griffin in what the Post described as a tax-the-rich video. Marc Rowan has been a vocal critic of Mamdani's economic policies and his anti-Israel views. When the mayor of America's financial capital goes out of his way to antagonize the people who run that financial capital, the consequences are predictable.
This is not complicated. Companies do not flee cities because of personality clashes. They leave because the math stops working, because taxes are too high, regulation is too heavy, and the political environment signals that things will only get worse. Mamdani's approach has sent exactly that signal.
The broader pattern among New York's progressive political leaders is consistent. Ambitious regulatory agendas and aggressive tax rhetoric play well in certain districts. They do not play well in boardrooms where executives decide where to put thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in capital.
Apollo manages money for pension funds, insurers, and wealthy investors. These are not shadowy speculators. They are the firms that invest retirement savings for teachers, firefighters, and public employees across the country. Driving them out of New York does not punish the rich. It punishes the city.
The migration of financial power to Texas is no longer a trend. It is a structural shift. Dallas is becoming a second financial center, with Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo building major operations. Austin is layering finance on top of its tech base. The state's legal and regulatory framework is designed to attract exactly the kind of firms New York is losing.
And the pipeline is not slowing down. The Texas Stock Exchange's planned summer launch would give companies an alternative to the New York-based exchanges that have dominated American markets for more than two centuries. That is not a symbolic gesture. It is an institutional challenge.
Meanwhile, New York's political leadership continues to treat business as a revenue source to be squeezed rather than a constituency to be served. The broader pattern among New York's Democratic leaders, from Washington to City Hall, has been to prioritize ideological positioning over the practical concerns of the people and institutions that keep the economy running.
Fulop's warning deserves repeating. The city needs a pro-business agenda with real support from the corporate community. It does not have one. And every week that passes without one, the list of firms looking south gets longer.
The Post approached an Apollo spokesperson for comment. Whether the firm responded is not clear. But Apollo's actions speak loudly enough. A company sitting on $800 billion in assets looked at America's options and picked Texas.
New York's progressive political establishment may not care that the finance industry is leaving. But the city workers whose pensions depend on a healthy tax base should care a great deal.
You can tax the rich, or you can keep the rich. New York's leaders made their choice. Now the rich are making theirs.
