Your Evening Briefing: Dallas Is Wall Street’s New Southern Rival

Dallas saw three of Wall Street’s largest banks start on new campuses this year, cementing bets on one of the fastest-growing US metros in one of the fastest-growing states. The industry’s rapid expansion in Texas means the area now has more finance workers than Chicago or Los Angeles—trailing only New York. The bank build-outs are helping solidify Dallas’s status as the financial mecca of the South, overshadowing competitors like Atlanta and Miami. Finance workers in Texas, however, tend to be paid a lot less than those in New York, even for similar jobs. Moreover, a greater portion of the finance-employee base there is made up of back-office operations. Then there are concerns that red state politics may eventually kneecap the nascent boom. Ken Paxton, the state’s Republican attorney general, has been reviewing whether financial companies including Bank of America and JPMorgan violate a state law that punishes firms for limiting work with the fossil fuel industry because of its leading role in the climate crisis. Texas officials have also probed financial firms over a 2021 law that restricts public contracts for companies that “discriminate” against gunmakers.

Norway’s largest pension manager, KLP, just blacklisted a dozen companies listed in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. The divestments mostly reflect what it called an “unacceptable” risk of contributing to human rights abuses, with Saudi Aramco targeted separately for what it deemed the oil giant’s negative impact on the environment. The excluded firms also included companies in the real estate sector, where KLP says migrant workers from Africa and Asia have faced discrimination and human rights violations. The Norwegian pension fund, which oversees $70 billion, targeted telecom as well, where it cited the development of artificial intelligence as reinforcing surveillance and censorship risks.