Stephen Ross and Ken Griffin plan $10 million campaign to attract more companies to South Florida.
When Wells Fargo announced it was moving the headquarters of its wealth-management operations to West Palm Beach, Chief Executive Barry Sommers said he was surprised at the upbeat response from potential clients and bank employees.
They weren’t the only ones excited about the move. Sommers said he also heard from leaders of other investment firms wanting to know how he decided to make the move from New York.
“They’re reaching out to me and wanting to talk about our process and how we got here,” Sommers said in an exclusive interview on Feb. 3 at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach.
Sommers was at the museum as part of a two-day “Invest Live” event hosted by The Wall Street Journal. The program was billed as a high-level gathering of business leaders discussing finance, artificial intelligence, policy and global trends.
But the event’s other purpose was to shine a light on South Florida, which is growing as a business, finance and wealth hub.
The spotlight was by design. Palm Beach resident Stephen Ross, the billionaire real estate developer and Miami Dolphins football team owner, sponsored the event.
Ross is intent on transforming West Palm Beach into what he calls “a model city.” He also has talked about turning Palm Beach County into the next Silicon Valley.
Now his ambitions are going beyond the county lines.
This week, Ross announced he and another South Florida billionaire, Kenneth Griffin, just poured $10 million into an effort to promote the South Florida region as a prime business destination.
“Ambition Accelerated” is linked to a statewide nonprofit business group known as the Florida Council of 100. The campaign’s goal is to encourage business leaders to leave big cities, such as New York and Chicago, and make the Sunshine State their corporate hub.
West Palm Beach protesters push back against big business focus
Not everyone is on board with turning the southern tip of the peninsula into a business and wealth enclave.
During a Feb. 2 evening reception for WSJ Live attendees at CityPlace, which Ross built, about 50 people gathered in chilly weather to protest.
Protesters decried the city’s transformation into a “safe haven for the ruling class” and what they said is the overdevelopment of Palm Beach County. Some protesters carried signs saying, “No Wall Street South!” and chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, billionaires have got to go.”
But inside the warm museum on Feb. 3, several speakers told more than 200 attendees about the benefits of doing business in South Florida.
One of them was Sommers, who told attendees the move was motivated by a desire to serve clients and attract employees.
In a subsequent interview, Sommers said he’s already moved a few executives into a small office in West Palm Beach but plans a summer move into larger space at Related Ross’ One Flagler, a luxury office building facing the Intracoastal Waterway.
Sommers said the office is expected to start with about 100 to 120 people, but if the business continues to attract attention, “we’ll definitely be willing to expand.”
Citadel’s Ken Griffin praises Florida lifestyle, Norton museum
Another speaker was Kenneth Griffin, founder of the Citadel hedge fund and investment firm. Griffin, worth $51 billion, owns the largest residential estate in Palm Beach, although he and his immediate family live in Miami.
He moved the headquarters of his Citadel hedge-fund firm and his Citadel Securities firm to Miami a few years ago from their longtime home in Chicago. Since then, he has become involved in a number of major real estate projects in Miami-Dade County, including plans for a skyscraper to house the Citadel companies in downtown Miami.
During the Feb. 3 event, Griffin recounted how the pandemic prompted him to bring Citadel traders from Chicago to the Four Seasons Palm Beach hotel. The idea was to recreate the trading floor and keep the business running, as executives brought their families there and everyone lived in a tropical bubble.
Within five days of setting up the technology, “we could run the entire U.S. equity market, if need be, from the ballroom of the Four Seasons in Palm Beach, Florida,” he said.
When the pandemic eased, Citadel employees returned to Chicago. Then the questions began.
“Why do we have to come back?” Griffin said employees asked him.
Executives praised Florida’s quality of life, safer streets, better schools and, of course, the weather.
Subsequently, Griffin moved the company to Miami, where the firm now operates its third-largest office, larger than in Chicago.
Griffin said he plans to continue the Florida lifestyle. “This will be home for the rest of my life,” Griffin said.
That’s why he said he brought his art collection from Chicago to the Norton, which he called “one of the great art museums in the United States.”
Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross moved full-time to Palm Beach during pandemic
As for Ross, he first entered West Palm Beach when he built CityPlace in 2000.
During the pandemic, he, too, decided to make a permanent move to Florida from New York and make his part-time Palm Beach home his permanent residence. He then split off the Southeast holdings of his company and created a new firm, based in West Palm Beach.
The Related Ross portfolio has grown substantially during the past six years. It now includes office buildings, hotels and residential towers.
More ventures are planned. Ross is helping to bring a Vanderbilt University graduate campus to West Palm Beach, and the company is behind efforts to launch a Cleveland Clinic hospital in the city, too.
In an interview at the Feb. 3 event, Related Ross executive vice president Jordan Rathlev said the Ross-Griffin campaign isn’t meant to take the place of business recruitment groups such as the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County or the Beacon Council in Miami-Dade County.
The campaign also isn’t designed to steer companies only to buildings owned by Ross or Griffin, he added.
“The idea is to lift the region as a whole and get as many eyes as much focus on this part of the state as possible,” Rathlev said.
Epstein-linked lawyer bows out
Numerous leaders in AI and finance spoke, including Jon Gray, chief executive of Blackstone, the world’s largest asset management group, with more than $1 trillion in assets under management.
Gray, worth $9 billion, called the U.S. economy a “battleship” that has weathered the uncertainty of tariffs and a government shutdown. But Gray still predicted a strong global future, including for the United States, thanks to the AI boom and declining costs for capital.
The event was supposed to feature Brad Karp, chairman of the Paul, Weiss law firm, speaking on the topic of “leadership in uncertain times.” However, Karp dropped out of the event after his name once again surfaced in the documents release this past weekend regarding Jeffrey Epstein, the Palm Beach sex predator.
What did Peltz say about the Beckham feud?
Billionaire corporate investor Nelson Peltz, a Palm Beach resident, did speak at the event, but he stuck to financial matters.
He declined to dish details of the goings on of his daughter, Nicola, who is married to Brooklyn Beckham, eldest son of soccer phenom and co-owner of the Inter Miami professional team David Beckham and his wife, Victoria, formerly of the Spice Girls. The young couple is estranged from the Beckhams, a dispute that has spilled into the media.
“My daughter and the Beckhams are a whole other story. That’s not for coverage here today,” Peltz said. “But I’ll tell you, my daughter is great. My son-in-law, Brooklyn, is great. And I look forward to them having a long and happy marriage together.”
Alexandra Clough is a business writer at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at [email protected].
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