Billionaire Ken Griffin says crime will force him to move his business out of Chicago: report
CHICAGO - A Chicago billionaire and businessman says he is ready to move his company out of Chicago because of the crime.
Ken Griffin runs the Citadel hedge fund and Citadel Securities, with headquarters on South Dearborn Street. But now, Griffin is looking to expand his current offices in New York and Florida.
In an interview Thursday with Bloomberg, Griffin says if things don't change, the firm is moving. He has previously expressed his frustration with the violence in Chicago.
Griffin recently donated $25 million to help finance a new University of Chicago Crime Lab program on policing and public safety training.
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In early May, Griffin donated another $25 million to Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin’s Republican gubernatorial bid. The hedge-fund founder last contributed $20 million to Irvin’s campaign in February.
Irvin is trying to survive a six-candidate Republican primary race that could ultimately pit Griffin’s billions against the fortune of another billionaire, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
In mid-January, Pritzker donated $90 million to his campaign fund, with some of the money already funneled to other Democratic organizations in the state.
Pritzker spent $171 million of his own money to beat former Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner in 2018, a race in which Griffin backed Rauner.
And the bad blood between the billionaires has only kept boiling since Griffin spent more than $50 million to defeat Pritzker’s graduated income tax constitutional amendment in 2020.
Last November — months before Irvin even entered the race — Griffin pledged to go "all in" to support a candidate who can beat the Democratic incumbent. Democrats cast it as an attempt to "finance Bruce Rauner 2.0."
Griffin is Illinois’ richest person, according to Forbes, with a fortune estimated at $26.7 billion. Pritzker’s net worth is estimated at $3.6 billion.
Sun-Times Media Wire contributed to this report.