Morning Coffee: New York to pay BlackRock $25m to create 700 jobs. Bankers rush to join this 29-year-old

BlackRock, which manages $5 trillion in assets, will move from tony Park Ave. to the Hudson Yards neighborhood on the far west side of Manhattan, where its headquarters will be for at least 20 years. The largest asset management company in the world pledged to keep 2,672 jobs in New York and to create another 700 new ones. In return, the state government is giving BlackRock special tax credits worth up to $25m.

That is after then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave the property developer hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks and spent $3bn of taxpayer money to extend the subway and build infrastructure in and around Hudson Yards.

BlackRock is moving from 31 floors across three buildings in Midtown to 15 consecutive floors in one building at the new property development, expected to cost $25bn and be completed in 2025. BlackRock has been growing over the past several years and some feel it would have been likely to add jobs anyway. Now it will get a tax credit of $35,714 for each of the 700 new hires.

“Given the city’s very generous Hudson Yards property tax discount already in place, it is mysterious why the state would be considering a further subsidy,” said James Parrott, an economist with the Fiscal Policy Institute, a government watchdog, told the New York Times. “This could unleash even more unnecessary taxpayer giveaways.”

Separately, Nate Paul, the 29-year-old from Austin, Texas, who founded the real estate investment firm World Class Capital Group, recently poached five senior real estate bankers from Credit Suisse as part of an aggressive expansion.

World Class Capital Group’s new hires are Paul Smyth, the former global chief credit officer for the commercial real estate originations group at Credit Suisse; Chris Callahan, the ex-head of trading for commercial mortgage bonds and collateralized loan obligations at the Swiss bank; Cary Williams, who previously worked in Credit Suisse’s structured products group; Jeremy Stoler, the former head of the bank’s commercial real estate originations group; and Ed Mikus, another commercial real estate banker from CS.

In addition, Keith Crandall, previously a managing director at C-III Asset Management, also joined World Class Capital Group, which adds up to six new senior employees over the past several months.

Meanwhile:

Credit Suisse has hired Robert Peck from SunTrust to become the head of its global internet banking division in New York. (Business Insider)

Eight months after Deutsche Bank settled a lawsuit claiming it manipulated gold and silver prices, documents it disclosed allegedly amount to a “smoking gun” – proof that UBS, HSBC, Bank of Nova Scotia and other banks rigged the silver market. (Bloomberg)

Andrew Ceresney, the director of the enforcement division at the Securities and Exchange Commission, will step down from the key regulatory position by the end of the year. (New York Times)

Big banks to Trump: Don’t kill the Dodd-Frank Act. (WSJ)

Banks such as HSBC and asset managers such as Invesco are using voice-analysis technology to listen in on traders’ phone calls and identify behavior associated with a successful career as a trader. (Bloomberg)

2017: the best ever year for financial services? (WSJ)

TCW’s Laird Landmann and Tad Rivelle have dethroned former employer Pimco to become kings of the bond market. (WSJ)

This hedge fund manager admires Warren Buffet, but the feeling isn’t mutual. (CNBC)

A KPMG study found that women make up only 15% of hedge fund CEOs and 11% of private equity and venture capital CEOs. (Business Insider)

London hedge fund Marshall Wace’s performance fees surged and its profits soared in the most recent financial year, meaning it could look to ramp up hiring in 2017. (Financial News)

Dublin doesn't have enough skilled finance workers to support a London influx (Financial News)

Several international U.K.-based banks are planning to move operations from London to Paris as Brexit looms large. (Independent)

Prince Harry found out what it’s like to work as a trader … kind of. (MarketWatch)

After founding members Goldman Sachs and Banco Santander pulled out of R3, a blockchain consortium of big banks, unveiled its new platform: Corda, a decentralized database that does not use blockchain technology at all. (Bloomberg)

Many financial services firms are paying up for good compliance officers to ensure a positive reputation by avoiding any illegal or ethically questionable activity. (WSJ)

The uncertainty of whether or not you’ll be fired is much worse than actually getting fired. (News Medical)

Photo credit: www.hudsonyardsnewyork.com