Citadel Pays $363 Million For New Miami Headquarters Land Purchase

We found out last week that Citadel Securities’ headquarters was moving from the hellhole of Chicago to the beautiful tropics of Miami. 

Bloomberg reports a more precise location where billionaire Ken Griffin plans to move Citadel’s headquarters, a 2.5-acre (1-hectare) vacant site at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive. 

Sources familiar with the matter said Griffin and Citadel paid a whopping $363 million for 1201 Brickell Bay Drive. The deal closed in April and was shielded by a limited liability company with a Chicago mailing address. Last week, Citadel said it would partner with developer Sterling Bay to design and build a new office tower in Brickell. 

Griffin wrote a letter to employees last Thursday indicating he had personally moved to Florida and that his market-making business, Citadel, would also transfer. He noted that he viewed Florida as a better corporate environment and didn’t specifically cite crime as a factor. 

The Citadel founder has an estimated worth of $28.9 billion – is the wealthiest resident of Illinois, and is among the world’s top 50 wealthiest, so his departure from Chicago is a huge blow and will hurt state tax collections on both the individual and corporate side. 

In an April interview with WSJ, Griffin suggested he might move his operations out of Illinois because of a rising crime rate and incidents involving employees in the state’s largest city. 

Back in October 2021, Griffin revealed that “Chicago is like Afghanistan, on a good day, and that’s a problem.”

Griffin’s decision to relocate Citadel to South Florida is the most significant move for a financial firm into the Sunshine State, and more evidence ‘Wall Street South’ emerges as other financial institutions from Democratic-controlled cities filled with high taxes and crime follow Citadel’s lead.