The hedge fund founder and other business leaders attended a roundtable with Mayor Eric Adams to discuss issues facing New York.
(Bloomberg) — Citadel’s Ken Griffin told New York City Mayor Eric Adams and other business leaders that public safety is the top priority, and that the city can’t be attractive to companies if crime is an issue.
New York has the highest density of financial talent in the world, including more than 1,500 Citadel employees, but crime trumps everything, Griffin said, according to people at Thursday’s roundtable meeting, which was closed to the media.
Griffin’s comments were among his first since Bloomberg reported details of a massive new office tower Citadel is planning to build on Park Avenue, giving his financial empire a concentrated New York footprint.
Read more: Citadel Plots Out NYC Tower in Major Buildout After Banner Year
About 60 people, including KKR & Co. co-founder Henry Kravis, Wells Fargo & Co. Chief Executive Officer Charlie Scharf and Tishman Speyer’s Rob Speyer, attended the meeting at KKR’s Hudson Yards headquarters, which was organized by the Partnership for New York City. Several in attendance described the conversation as congenial, with Griffin expressing confidence in the city’s ability to tackle its challenges.
“Safety was the No. 1 issue, but the No. 2 issue was city leadership, and he credited Mayor Adams with providing the business community with assurance that he was going to be a pro-jobs, pro-business mayor,” Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, who attended the meeting, said in an interview referring to Griffin.
Adams, 62, a moderate Democrat and a former cop, has spent his first year in office re-engaging with the city’s business and finance sectors after eight years of more strained relations under Bill de Blasio. He offered no new promises at Thursday’s meeting, but defended his efforts at combating crime, including beefing up police patrols in the city’s subway.
Griffin, 54, has wielded his vast fortune to influence local city leaders through a combination of massive real estate footprint and philanthropy. Last year he relocated the headquarters of market maker Citadel Securities and hedge fund Citadel to Miami from Chicago, citing a rise in crime and employees’ brushes with danger as a primary motivation.
One of his senior colleagues was robbed after a person put “a gun to his head” as he was on a coffee run, Griffin said in an interview last year, and another was waiting for a car when confronted by “some random lunatic just trying to punch him in the head.”
The dissatisfaction with Chicago and its current leadership is a sharp turn from the rapport Griffin and former Mayor Rahm Emanuel enjoyed. Griffin cited that relationship as a model for how he’d like to work with Miami Mayor Francis Suarez.
Griffin, who gave $750,000 to a super PAC supporting Adams’s candidacy in 2021, has called on him to embrace a public safety strategy, or else risk going down the same path as Chicago.
Beyond crime, Griffin expressed concerns about education and housing, Wylde said.
“Families have to feel they can get a good education, and employees — especially young employees — have to have affordable housing in the city,” Wylde said.
The mayor described what he’s doing in both areas, specifically charter schools and zoning reform.
Griffin, who gave more than $650 million in philanthropic support in Chicago, has made sizable gifts in New York, including $40 million each to the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Modern Art.
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