Boston - Why is there so many finance jobs?
I was curious as to why there is so many IB and RE jobs in Boston? I get NYC, Charlotte(ib hq), Atlanta but why Boston?
I was curious as to why there is so many IB and RE jobs in Boston? I get NYC, Charlotte(ib hq), Atlanta but why Boston?
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Boston is to biotech what sf is to software companies
Concentration of tech/healthcare companies I’d imagine
What's in Atlanta?
Economic hub of the southeast
There’s also a lot of money that’s been there for generations and it’s been a center of commerce for the US for almost four centuries. Many investment management firms. That’s actually the main thing I think of in terms of Boston finance.
Because Boston is one of the biggest economies in the US?
As much as I hate the accent there lol, the burgeoning HC and tech scene there is unavoidable and firms not capitalizing in the area are likely missing out - disregarding legacy boston firms obviously
In addition to RE and IB, a high percentage of mutual fund companies are located in Boston.
IB isn’t all that prevalent - it’s mainly boutiques or tech / biotech / HC groups of larger players. Handful of solid PE firms as well.
Always been a hub for asset management / hedge funds due to the proximity to old money and good schools.
Also consulting firms.
Biotech is certainly a big factor, but I think the emergence of Boston as a biotech/finance hub is more a symptom of the real underlying driver: access to talent. Boston has two of the greatest research institutions in the entire world (Harvard and MIT) plus many other top-quality universities (Tufts, BC, BU, etc.) While the latter may not be true target schools, they're still full of smart kids who many employers would love to hire from. Throw in proximity to most other ivies (Dartmouth, Brown, Yale) and you can quickly see a concentration of talent unrivaled by most US cities outside NYC and SF. If I'm developing a new biotech product, I want my lab as close to Harvard and MIT as possible. If I'm in the businesses of financing biotech, I want to be near those labs and I'll hire top talent from Harvard and MIT plus schools in the surrounding area to do it.
Agree, Boston/Massachusetts, thanks to its Puritan roots, has some of the best educational institutions in the country. MA is also the state that passed the first law mandating universal public education.
"Much like eg Unitarians today, the Puritans were a religious group that drew disproportionately from the most educated and education-obsessed parts of the English populace. Literacy among immigrants to Massachusetts was twice as high as the English average, and in an age when the vast majority of Europeans were farmers most immigrants to Massachusetts were skilled craftsmen or scholars. And the Puritan “homeland” of East Anglia was a an unusually intellectual place, with strong influences from Dutch and Continental trade; historian Havelock Ellis finds that it “accounts for a much larger proportion of literary, scientific, and intellectual achievement than any other part of England.”
https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-seed/
FMR/Fidelity, StateStreet, Wellington, Putnam are all from Boston. Plus with Harvard and MIT there it’s clearly a prime hub for candidates.
Don't forget MFS - originator of the first mutual fund. Also John Hancock.
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