Though not as big a deal as Citadel leaving Chicago, this is still a signpost on the way to a very different country. Fisher has been over $200 Billion in Assets Under Management.
$173,418,270,044 as of the most recent Form ADV, March 27, 2023
From Barron's, March 28:
Fisher Investments is relocating its headquarters from Washington state to Texas in the wake of a court ruling that paves the way for a capital gains tax in Washington.
The wealth and investment management firm announced Friday it was moving to Texas, where it already has an office in Plano, a suburb of Dallas. Since 2015, Fisher Investments’ headquarters have been in Camas, Wash.
Fisher Investments’ announcement came the same day that Washington’s State Supreme Court ruled that a capital gains tax approved by lawmakers in 2021 was constitutional. Implementation of the tax had been held up by legal challenges.
“In honor of the Washington State Supreme Court’s wisdom and knowledge of the law, and in recognition of whatever it may do next, Fisher Investments is immediately moving its headquarters from Washington State to Texas,” Fisher said in a statement.
A company representative did not respond to a request for additional comment.
The capital gains tax applies only to individuals and profits above $250,000 per year, according to the state’s Department of Revenue. The tax does not apply to real estate or assets held in retirement accounts....
....MUCH MORE
Another shop we follow, deep value (sometimes very deep value) mavens Smead Capital Management left Washington State a few years ago:
Factor Investing: "When Quality Fails"
....Along the way we also had a story about Smead Capital with this introduction:
Seattle Real Estate Not a Good Bet
The news that the city is going to shut-down CHAZ CHOP is not going to be nearly enough to save Seattle.
When quality fails.
Amazon and Microsoft have been the engine of growth, in a way similar to Silicon Valley where the whole world is funneling money into a small geographical area and in the case of Amazon with coronavirus we've just seen the high-water mark for this cycle.
Like so many societies throughout history getting wealthy means getting flabby, with politics and programs that a poorer, hungrier society can't afford.
Looking at a third metro area, Minneapolis' heyday was roughly 1880 - 1980 with the northern tier railroads, Great Northern and Northern Pacific and the heavyweight ag businesses, Pillsbury, General Mills etc. giving way to first round tech, Medtronic and St. Jude Medical, Control Data and Cray Research and then stagnation into a violent* little backwater, coasting on accumulated capital and slowly becoming irrelevant on the world stage except as a chokepoint for soybeans and corn being sent down the Mississippi or up to Duluth and eventually the Atlantic.
Seattle was touted as heaven-on-earth with the $15.00 minimum wage for restaurant workers but the touts never mentioned that it was only because of Amazon that it was possible.
And now those jobs are no more and 50% of them will not come back.
For a while Seattle had more construction cranes than New York and even London but those days are gone and here's the rest of the story from Phoenix's KTAR news:
Due to Seattle’s unrest, billion-dollar investment firm moving to Phoenix....
