Per the title, is Charlotte the new middle market and B team hub for larger banks? Widely understood this use to be Chicago (I know some chicagoans are going to flip)
You walk around Chicago now and it’s not what it once was, use to be a hub for commodities traders and not so much anymore. Charlottes much warmer, obviously culturally less significant but solely financially oriented.
Get a grip. Charlotte PLUS MIAMI together still contribute less than Chicago in term of GDP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_GDP
This does not address the nuance
This doesn't contradict the point of his question which was relating to the massive influx of financial services providers now that Chicago is becoming aggressively less business-friendly.
Sir, and I mean this in the most disrespectful way, don't you ever compare Charlotte to Chicago.
Lmao
I wouldn't say Charlotte is the new Chicago. Chicago is 100% on the decline from a business perspective though. Not many reasons to do business there right now.
It's a laughable comparison from any perspective, whether GDP or cultural significance or city tiers
Charlottle is on the up and Chicago is on the decline, yes. But it's a big difference between the #3 city on the US from a GDP perspective falling to 4 or 5 over time vs. the #21 city one day moving to 20 or 19....maybe in 100 years your comparison will have any kind of practical use if the two ever converge
used
Charlotte is not the new Chicago, but Cooked County sure knows how to mess things up.
New York: Bugatti
London: McLaren
Chicago: Lamborghini
Los Angeles: Ferrari
DC: Rolls Royce
Charlotte: Buick
Minneapolis: Nissan
West Baltimore: A smashed up tricycle in a ditch
What's Miami? I would say they should be the McLaren and London can be an Aston Martin.
Miami is a Lexus
lol
charlotte fucking sucks. If you like it there you belong there. Chicago is 100x the city charlotte is.
Which looks more like a city to you?
This tbh.
Bottom picture is Dubai, right? A handful of locals who have the power to make the rules. Expats who operate the city. Everyone else is an indentured servant whose status is not much higher than outright slave. Oh, and the weather is the worst in the world.
I have no idea on your question, but it is hilarious to me that people are so focused on Chicago's GDP to refute your point vs. a very specific trend of financial teams locating elsewhere that likely barely register as a blip on the radar in the GDP conversation either way.
Question is if Charlotte is the new, or trending towards becoming, the new middle-market IB hub
I have no idea because I'm not in investment banking and don't follow team locations/bank trends all that closely. People are saying that Chicago has scale for everything (see the comment below about NBA teams?), but don't address your question about a small subset of one comparison point of Chicago/Charlotte (i.e., the number of middle-market investment banking teams).
Charlotte is not the new Chicago. Charlotte doesn't have anywhere near the scale Chicago has in anything. Well, maybe in the number of NBA and NFL teams they have but that's it.
Charlotte is on the up. But saying that Charlotte is the new Chicago is like saying Cooper Flagg is as good as prime MJ. Cooper could be that good one day, but he sure as hell is not that good right now.
Charlotte is like a mid-tier PE fund—solid returns, growing fast, but not Blackstone.
Chicago? Legacy finance. Still a major hub, still has MJ’s ghost.
Charlotte wins on cost of living, fewer rats, and no human feces. Chicago wins on scale, history, and having more than one NBA team.
Final verdict: If you rock a Patagonia vest unironically, stay in Chicago. If you want to be the coolest guy at a Whole Foods bar, Charlotte’s your spot. 🍌
What are you talking about
Clearly AI-generated slop. Dumb and wrong. Do better.
I lived in Charlotte for a bit. I liked the vibe, but can't imagine it's the "New Chicago"
I’m straying a little from your point but the decline of commodity traders in Chicago you mentioned seems to be a big part of this “funk” that everyone says Chicago is in. You basically had 10 guys for every 1 quant you have now, and they contributed massively to the cultural zeitgeist in Chicago (drinking/dining downtown after work, patronizing shops in the loop) etc. absolutely gregarious characters too. The pits drying up at CBOE/CBOT have probably been more or equally damning than any politician or corporate HQ leaving because of politicians.
Long term I am bullish on Chicago because of many of the aforementioned reasons (great transit, great public spaces, sports teams, infrastructure of a world class city, universities) but I also think there’s a great case to be made for Charlotte. CoL wise I think they are both about equal.
As for your original point - most I can concede at this time is that Charlotte is (or can become) Chicago South, because I am very partial to Chicago 🤣
The answer is no. Not because one city is on the rise and the other on the fall. But more to the point that the job itself is becoming ever more distributed. There are LMM banks that have front office teams in 5 or more cities. The days of centralization are gone. We are migrating towards ever more specialization in all aspects of the knowlege economy.
I think the real question that should be asked here is where is the new Detroit region going to be in the US.
Charlotte has definitely grown as a banking hub, mostly because it’s cheaper and laser-focused on finance. But culturally and historically? It’s not even close. Chicago was and still is a major player, with deep financial roots that Charlotte can’t match.
Feel free to contact me if you need financial services – in Chicago.
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