AllianceBernstein Relocates HQ from NYC to Nashville
The Wall Street money manager cites lower state, city and property taxes as a reason for its move.
NEW YORK CITY—AllianceBernstein is moving its headquarters from New York City to Nashville, TN. The 51-year-old Wall Street firm will be taking approximately 1,050 jobs and will begin moving employees in 2018, as first reported in the Wall Street Journal. The company manages $550 billion in assets.
According to its 2017 annual report, AllianceBernstein has leased 992,043 square feet of space at its current location of 1345 Avenue of the Americas. Its lease with property owner Fisher Brothers expires in 2024. The asset manager presently occupies 523,373 square feet of the space and has sublet or is seeking to sublet approximately 468,670 square feet of the space.
The money manager has an additional lease in another New York City location, and leases 229,147 square feet at One North Lexington in White Plains, NY. At this location, the company occupies about 69,000 square feet of space and has sublet or intends to sublet slightly over 160,000 square feet of space.
In an SEC filing, AllianceBernstein indicated private wealth management, sell-side research, trading and investment teams will remain in New York. Legal compliance, internal audit, human capital, finance, IT, operations and sales and marketing will move to Nashville.
Throughout the US, AllianceBernstein leases more than 92,000 square feet of space in San Antonio, TX and smaller properties in 21 other US cities. Its subsidiaries lease offices in 28 cities outside the US, most prominently in London and Hong Kong.
Seth Bernstein, AllianceBernstein’s CEO, in a press conference in Nashville said the search was a year-long process, starting with a list of 30 cities, narrowed down to five. “Moving our corporate headquarters here allows us to offer advantages to our employees that we simply couldn’t in the New York metro area,” he said. “A more affordable cost of living, with lower taxes and housing costs, a high quality of life, including much shorter commute times for many of our people and a brand-new, state of the art work environment, with all the best technology and tools, something our current, dated spaces in New York don’t afford.”
In addition, the Wall Street Journal cited an AllianceBernstein memo to employees that cited state, city and property taxes compared with the New York metropolitan area as a reason for the move.
The new headquarters are expected to be finished in 2020 with the relocation scheduled for completion in 2022.
MarketWatch reported that the move is part of a broad cost-cutting effort. The publication wrote that for years the firm has been under extreme pressure caused by the rising popularity of index funds and low-cost investing. It noted this development reinforced a trend of finance jobs moving to less expensive cities in the US. Similarly, CNBC reported that similar to many asset managers focused on stock picking, AllianceBernstein has struggled to keep up with the shift toward passive investing. The business channel stated AllianceBernstein reported a $6 billion decline in assets under management in March.