In his annual letter to shareholders, JPMorgan Chase CEO sent a warning to businesses trying to survive in NYC under radical socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The city is already grappling with the ramifications of the COVID exodus that pushed businesses to more business-friendly states.
Less than a month after taking office, Mamdani already began talking about raising taxes on the ‘wealthy’ to make up the city’s budget deficit, which he claims is on par with the Great Recession.
In February, Mamdani warned the city may have to raise property taxes to close a multibillion-dollar budget deficit.
The warning came as Mamdani unveiled a $127 billion city budget.
According to Bloomberg, the mayor said the tax hike would be necessary if state lawmakers in Albany do not impose new taxes on wealthy residents or businesses operating in the city.
While not enacted yet, during his campaign in the fall, he promised to punish companies that leave the city with additional taxes.
Mamdani’s intentions, backed by matching rhetoric, have business leaders nervous. Dimon’s remarks did little to assuage those concerns.
Dimon wrote, “Cities — like individuals, companies, and countries — need to compete,. No matter who you are, you need to deal with reality and the truth.”
“The truth is that while New York City has much going for it, particularly for financial companies (because of extraordinary local talent), it also has the highest city and state corporate taxes and the highest individual income and state taxes,” he continued.
Although he did not mention Mamdani by name, he warned,“People often make this a moral or loyalty issue, but it is not.”
“Companies need to remain competitive in this very tough, fast-moving world. And higher taxes mean lower returns on capital and less competitiveness by their nature.”
“You can already see a fairly large exodus of people and jobs out of some states with high taxes and high expenses,” he warned.
JPMorgan Chase has already begun shifting its workforce and now employs more people in Texas (over 31,000) than in New York.
Since 2020, some of the major companies to leave NYC, or dramiticly reduce their New York based operatings are:
Elliott Management relocated its headquarters from Manhattan to West Palm Beach, Florida, in October 2020.
Icahn Capital Management / Icahn Enterprises moved its headquarters to Florida (Sunny Isles Beach area) around 2020–2021.
AllianceBernstein relocated its headquarters from New York to Nashville, Tennessee in May 2022.
ARK Investment Management moved its headquarters to St. Petersburg, Florida in 2021.
Goldman Sachs is building a massive new 800,000 sq ft campus in Dallas, Texas (opening 2028) to consolidate over 5,000 employees. The company is also heavily expanding in Florida
Wells Fargo moved its wealth and investment management division to West Palm Beach, Florida in early 2026 and opened a large campus in Dallas/Irving, Texas.
Mamdani’s plans to take the wealthy and corporations will face continued complications as he pushes more and more of them out of the city.
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