Wall Street’s Dallas Takeover Worrying to New Yorkers

4 October 2025

Wall Street’s creep into Texas turned into a stampede of financial institutions bounding into Dallas and grabbing acres of office space in recent years, and the trend has New Yorkers shaking in their Timberlands.

The latest back-office clearance came last week, when the Texas Stock Exchange won approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to set up shop, putting it on track to open next year, the Wall Street Journal reported. The exchange is temporarily located at 4550 Travis Street in Uptown Dallas and is searching for a long-term headquarters, likely in downtown.

None other than the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are next, each of those exchanges with regional headquarters planned in Dallas. NYSE chose a traditional office enclave to house the offices of its Texas exchange, taking a lease at Harlan Crow’s Old Parkland in Uptown Dallas, The Real Deal first reported back in June.

The cast of big players with a rooting interest in Dallas as a growing center of the financial world looks likely to help. The nation’s largest homebuilder, Arlington-based D.R. Horton, is among the powerhouses committed to listing on the NYSE Texas exchange.

A lot of the groundwork has been laid without the fanfare that has accompanied the more recent push for full-blown Y’All Street. Texas already has more financial services jobs than New York City, the New York Post reported. Many more are on the way, with Goldman Sachs developing a $500 million office in Uptown and Wells Fargo building a 22-acre campus in Irving’s Las Colinas.

And then there’s JPMorgan Chase, by far the largest bank in the United States, which has more employees in Texas than in its headquarters, New York City. The bank’s Dallas headcount is creeping up on NYC’s with 18,000 employees in Big D compared to 24,000 in the Big Apple.

Dallas-Fort Worth is one of Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s favorite markets, and he’s been bullish on Texas for years.

“It’s hospitable. It’s the infrastructure, it’s the education, it’s the taxes. They want business, they support it,” Dimon told the Dallas Morning News in 2023. “It’s conducive to helping everybody. That’s how you build a healthy, vibrant society. And so we’re urging them here not to become like Washington, D.C., which does almost everything it can to slow down the growth of companies.”

As Texas kicks up its heels to Y’all Street, New Yorkers are alarmed.

“The financial services industry, they’re our biggest taxpayers and major employers — and that industry is shrinking in New York,” Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City said on talk radio recently. “That’s scary.”

Then again, Chase’s Dimon is about to cut the ribbon on a 2.5 million-square-foot headquarters on Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, so it’s not exactly a zero-sum game at this point.

Uptown rides Y’All Street to biggest office sale

Another cause for Dallasites to cheer the arrival of financial firms: Uptown is the epicenter of Y’all Street and Dallas’ hottest office market, out-competing downtown Dallas for top leases, including Bank of America’s 238,000-square-foot lease at KDC’s under construction Parkside Uptown.

Union Investment knocked one out of the park with the sale of an office building at 2000 McKinney Avenue in Uptown, the biggest office trade in Dallas so far this year. The price for the 21-story, 457,000-square-foot property wasn’t disclosed, but the German investor said it “a significant value increase” to its 2016 purchase price of $226 million, or $500 per square foot. The buyer wasn’t disclosed.

That price beats the $218 million price Atlanta-based Cousins Properties’ paid for the Link at Uptown, at 2601 Olive Street, in August. Cousins’ transaction still wins on price per square foot at $747.

NorthPark takes back ownership

The DFW-NYC connection is working out nicely for the Texans of the Nasher-Haemisegger family.

The once and future owners of NorthPark Center in Dallas went to several banks in the Big Apple for a $900 million refinancing deal that buys out a single New York outfit that held a majority stake in the upscale indoor retail center in North Dallas.

Nasher-Haemisigger’s deal includes a two-year, floating-rate CMBS loan from Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. The debt will wipe out $650M in previous debt and allow the family to buy out JPMorgan’s stake in the mall, which has more than 200 stores and restaurants.

Eiseman Jewels recently made a massive investment in the 2.35 million-square-foot mall, and Neiman Marcus is expected to invest in its store there. The mall was developed in 1965 by Ray Nasher.

In memoriam

Joshua Pack, the co-CEO of Dallas-based Fortress Investment Group died recently at age 51. Pack joined Fortress, which also has a headquarters in New York, 23 years ago. He was promoted to co-CEO two years ago and had recently relocated from Dallas to London to focus on European expansion. The cause of death wasn’t disclosed.