Billionaire Ken Griffin is reaching a tipping point with Chicago, the home to his market maker and hedge fund business, as the city wrestles with rising crime.
“We’re getting to the point that if things don’t change, we’re gone,” Griffin, who founded both the hedge fund Citadel and the market-making business Citadel Securities, said Thursday in an interview. “Things aren’t changing.”
Griffin’s businesses currently count South Dearborn Street in Chicago as their headquarters, just a few blocks from the Willis Tower and close to Millennium Park. He’s long hinted that he would consider relocating the firm amid growing frustrations with violence and political leadership in Illinois.
The Citadel founder has been a vocal advocate of public safety measures, calling some of the violence “senseless” as he announced a $25 million donation to help finance University of Chicago Crime Lab’s new program on policing and public safety training.
“No formal decision has been made,” Zia Ahmed, a spokesperson for Griffin, said.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office said the city still remains an “attractive” destination for employers despite the upheaval caused by the pandemic and social unrest. A spokesman cited data that 173 companies relocated, expanded or started in Chicago last year.
“Mayor Lightfoot, under unprecedented circumstances, faced the challenges with a concrete plan to support and invest in our entrepreneurs,” a spokesman for Lightfoot’s office said in an emailed statement. “We agree that there is more work ahead of us, but the business momentum underway is palpable.”
Citadel has been seeking more office space in Manhattan, as it plans on growing its employee base in the city, Bloomberg reported in February. The firm, which already has several locations in New York, has been in talks to lease even more space in Midtown. One of those locations is expanding at 425 Park Ave., where Citadel signed on as an anchor tenant before the pandemic started. The firm also occupies space in Florida and has been looking to expand in the Sunshine State.
New York penthouse
Griffin, who has a net worth of $29.7 billion, founded Citadel in 1990, and the hedge fund now has about $51 billion in investment capital. He later established Citadel Securities, the market maker that serves asset managers, banks, broker-dealers, hedge funds, government agencies and public pension programs.
Griffin has personal property in Chicago, but raised eyebrows when he purchased a New York penthouse on Central Park South for a record $238 million in January of 2019. The Florida native also owns one of the largest pieces of property in Palm Beach, Florida.
Citadel Securities, the market making business, has roughly 540 employees in Chicago out of 1,300 globally, according to the firm. Citadel the hedge fund employs 530 in Chicago out of 2,700 globally.
He’s long criticized poor leadership in various states. On Thursday, he said a lack of leadership has led to a deterioration of Detroit’s buildings, which he likened to the infrastructure destruction in war-torn Ukraine. Illinois is going through the same chaotic governance situation now, he said.
The billionaire has been giving millions of dollars to Illinois’ Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard Irvin, the mayor of the state’s second-largest city Aurora. Irvin is working to unseat Governor J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat who is currently seeking a second term.
Pritzker’s campaign pushed back on Griffin’s comments, citing the work the state is doing to add new troopers and invest in crime prevention efforts.
“Governor Pritzker has added hundreds of new troopers to the depleted ranks of the Illinois State Police and funded state-of-the-art crime labs to provide law enforcement with the tools they need to quickly solve crimes and put dangerous criminals behind bars,” Pritzker’s campaign spokeswoman Natalie Edelstein said in an emailed statement.
“He’s also made unprecedented investments in violence prevention programs, ensuring people have access to the tools that prevent crime in the first place, such as mental health support, job training opportunities, and summer youth employment programs,” Edelstein said.
‘Poor political leaders’
“I am involved in politics because I’ve seen what happens when you have poor political leaders,” Griffin said during a Bloomberg Intelligence event in New York on Thursday. “Right now, I live in a state that’s the case study of this.”
A pullback from Citadel would mark another blow to Chicago. Boeing Co. recently decided to leave the city in a plan that would shift its headquarters to Arlington, Virginia.
Shooting incidents in the Windy City rose 9% while theft jumped 21% and motor vehicle thefts increased 7% in 2021 from a year earlier, according to data on the Chicago Police Department’s website. While shootings are down so far this year, carjackings and thefts continue to climb.
The city announced earlier this week that unaccompanied minors won’t be allowed in Millennium Park, home to the renowned “Bean” sculpture, from Thursday through Sunday after 6 p.m. Lightfoot is also signing an executive order to move the city’s curfew on weekends to 10 p.m. from 11 p.m.
“My patience is wearing thin,” Griffin said Thursday in the interview, citing an incident he witnessed outside his office this past weekend.
