New York City-based Morgan Stanley officially announced plans to establish a U.S. hub in Dallas on Monday, marking the latest addition to the growing Y’all Street financial services corridor.

The hub, backed by more than $62 million in state and city funding, will bring 1,500 jobs to Dallas by 2031 and more than 3,800 jobs by 2035, Morgan Stanley said.

The expansion represents “another marquee win” for Dallas, John Boyd Jr., principal at corporate site selection and economic consulting firm The Boyd Co., told Dallas Innovates. It also signals the city’s core “is fully participating in the tsunami of investment — not just North Texas submarkets like Plano, Frisco and Westlake,” Boyd said.

“Morgan Stanley adds another major piece to the Y’all Street storyline, making it much more than just a nickname,” he said. “It is becoming a very real financial industry hub.”

Job growth

Morgan Stanley said it will invest $684 million in the hub. At first, it will lease roughly 255,000 square feet at Fountain Place downtown. In 2031, it expects to move into a 700,000-square-foot campus planned for Uptown. City and state officials estimate the project will attract more than $1.3 billion in direct and indirect capital investments.

The impact of Morgan Stanley’s hub will go beyond the thousands of employees who will work in Uptown, Boyd said. Dallas-Fort Worth’s growing cluster of financial services heavyweights makes it easier for companies in the sector to justify locating in North Texas and to recruit talent here, he said. It also creates demand for companies in the legal, accounting, consulting, recruiting, technology, real estate, hospitality and executive housing sectors.

“Opportunity’s address is now Y’all Street,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement about the Morgan Stanley expansion.

Fueling the financial talent pipeline

Eric Grossman, Morgan Stanley’s executive vice president, chief legal officer and chief administrative officer, said in a statement that opportunities for “growth, innovation and talent” helped spur the company’s decision to establish a hub in Dallas.

“The message to the business world is clear: Dallas has become one of America’s premier destinations for financial services and a place where ambitious companies come to build their future,” Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said in a statement.

JPMorgan Chase, which employs more than 17,000 people in North Texas, is another financial giant that has recognized the talent available in DFW, Boyd said. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon “has underscored the fact that financial firms like his and others increasingly recognize that they can place sophisticated, high-value operations in Dallas at enormous scale without sacrificing access to talent,” Boyd said.

Despite Dimon and other executives championing Dallas, Boyd does not believe the city will replace New York City as the country’s No. 1 financial services center. But he said Big D is emerging as a viable Big Apple alternative, as are cities like Charlotte, North Carolina; Miami; and Nashville, Tennessee.

‘Another center of excellence’

The impact of Y’all Street was among the themes at the Dallas Regional Chamber’s Tomorrow Summit earlier this month. The Sept. 16 event brought together business and civic leaders to discuss forces shaping the region’s economy.

At the event, Rachel Racz, president of Dallas-based Nasdaq Texas and senior vice president of listings, said the real power behind Y’all Street isn’t in the companies that choose to list their stocks on Texas exchanges or the financial services powerhouses that set up shop in Dallas. Rather, she said, Y’all Street will truly arrive when those companies make an impact.

“It will matter when capital markets decisions are made here, when fundraising decisions are made here, when capital is injected into companies from here … And I think we’ll start seeing that within the next five years,” Racz said. 

Some people incorrectly view Y’all Street as “too small,” Racz said. “To me, Y’all Street is another center of excellence in the United States of America,” she said.

That center of excellence continues to expand. While Dallas-Fort Worth represents 27% of the Texas population, it accounts for 41% of the state’s jobs in financial services, Mike Rosa, the Dallas Regional Chamber’s senior vice president of economic development, said at the event. 

Other major financial services companies in DFW include Charles Schwab, Citi, Fidelity Investments, GM Financial, Nasdaq Texas, NYSE Texas, Santander Consumer USA, Toyota Financial Services, TXSE and Wells Fargo. Bank of America and Goldman Sachs are stepping up their North Texas presence with trophy office projects under construction in Uptown.

Bloomberg takes note 

In yet another sign of Y’all Street’s ascendance, Bloomberg will hold the inaugural Bloomberg Invest Dallas event on Oct. 26 and 27 at The Joule hotel.

Bloomberg said the gathering will assemble leaders in investment, public and private markets, banking, securities exchanges and other sectors. Among the planned topics: how to capitalize on the “DFW wealth influx.”

Scheduled speakers include Ross Perot Jr., chairman of The Perot Cos. and Hillwood; Elaine Agather, global vice chairwoman of J.P. Morgan Private Bank and chairwoman of the Dallas region for JPMorgan Chase; James Lee, chairman and CEO of TXSE Group, which operates the Dallas-based Texas Stock Exchange; and Lynn Martin, president of NYSE Group.