Citadel CEO Ken Griffin aired grievances with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani during a conversation at Milken Institute’s global conference Tuesday, suggesting that his hedge fund will shift from Manhattan to Miami, Florida.
The conflict with Griffin began on April 15, when Mamdani announced his proposed “pied-a-terre” tax.
Posted on Tax Day, Mamdani filmed himself outside Griffin’s home.
“This is an annual fee on luxury properties worth more than $5 million, whose owners do not live full time in the city,” the mayor explained. “Like for this penthouse, which hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin bought for $238 million.”
The video has been viewed 52 million times.
Griffin told his audience on Tuesday night that three of those views were his own.
He watched it once and thought to himself, “You gotta be kidding me,” he said. Then he watched it again and said, “This has gone from creepy to frightening, because the CEO of United Healthcare was killed just a few blocks from my house. And anything that creates an agitation among extremists — on either side of the aisle — is a frightening dynamic.”
“What Mamdani just did to me and more broadly is doing to the city of New York is triggering of the trauma I went through in Chicago,” Griffin said.
Griffin lived in Chicago for 30 years and helped make the city into a major financial hub. Then, when JB Pritzker was elected as governor of Illinois in 2018 and Lori Lightfoot was elected as mayor of Chicago in 2019, Griffin said the area “lost its way.”
“Violent crime (is) the biggest problem,” he said.
Griffin said he counted 25 bullet holes in the ground floor of his apartment in Chicago. He referenced consistent looting in luxury stores across the street. He witnessed carjackings and referenced homicides that happened within 500 yards of his home.
“It became impossible to recruit people to Illinois, because the question would be posed, ‘I love the job, I love the people, but will my family be safe here?’ And you couldn’t look somebody in the eyes and go, ‘Your family will be safe here,’” Griffin said.
“The best you could do is, ‘I hope they will be,’” he told his audience Tuesday.
When asked whether Citadel will move forward with its planned $6 billion office at 350 Park Avenue, Griffin said the firm is in the middle of a reassessment.
He then described the relocation and expansion to Miami as “unquestionably” the right choice.
Other businessmen, including CEO of Vornado Realty Trust, Steven Roth, have criticized Mamdani’s “tax-the-rich” video, calling it “dangerous” and an “ugly, unnecessary video stunt.”
Linda Yaccarino, the former CEO of X Corp., called the video “one of the scariest things I have seen.” Yaccarino is a New York resident with an apartment in Manhattan.