Is Dallas World Class? (Houston, Fort Worth: to rent, hotels, homes)

[robertobaggio]

Originally Posted by EDS_

I'll be sure and tell my friend who works at Goldman Sachs in the Crescent Court that his job has actually been in Houston all along.

GS is an investment bank (yes) but that doesn't mean its Dallas office is part of the Investment Banking Division. Ask your friend in what function he works. I gurantee you he will say Private Wealth Management (PWM) or something backoffice related. Major Investment Banking Divisions for Bulge Brackets are all split only between NY, Houston, Chicago, L.A. and San Francisco/Silicon Valley for the most part. Same goes for Elite Boutiques like Lazard. Moelis just announced the opening of its Houston office.

Moelis & Company: News (http://www.moelis.com/news/newsHouston.php - broken link)

What you do have in Dallas is a fairly good number of Hedge Funds and Private Equity groups.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by robertobaggio

GS is an investment bank (yes) but that doesn't mean its Dallas office is part of the Investment Banking Division. Ask your friend in what function he works. I gurantee you he will say Private Wealth Management (PWM) or something backoffice related. Major Investment Banking Divisions for Bulge Brackets are all split only between NY, Houston, Chicago, L.A. and San Francisco/Silicon Valley for the most part. Same goes for Elite Boutiques like Lazard. Moelis just announced the opening of its Houston office.

Moelis & Company: News (http://www.moelis.com/news/newsHouston.php - broken link)

What you do have in Dallas is a fairly good number of Hedge Funds and Private Equity groups.

He is an arbitrage expert, Fisher Effect/Hypothesis that kind of thing.

I'll ask him about your comments tomorrow.


BTW - I'm a big fan of The Vice Fund.

[JimBaker488]

Originally Posted by dv1033

That is not entirely true. Compared to the amount of goods DFW produces and the amount it exports doesn't nearly keep up with each other. It's air cargo is certainly impressive and is far superior to Houston, but Houston is increasingly become a domestic and international hub for goods through and into the USA. Just wait until the Panama Canal upgrade is complete and Asian imports can easily bypass the West Coast. I'm not trying to take away DFW's logistical importance but Houston is just more strategically located.

Houston is a SeaPort, while Dallas is land-locked prairie country and as such it's really unfair to make the comparison in international terms.

[HOAPRESIDENT]

Originally Posted by robertobaggio

But all major investment banks are in Houston (and more to come like Moelis), not in Dallas!

That is really unfair and inaccurate. Those banks that have an investment banking function mainly deal out of their New York office and may use liaison offices in satellite cities when there is an acquiring or target company there. But the main horsepower has always been in NYC and continues to be.

I have no doubt that they use their Houston office regularly due to the number of oil companies there. But to claim that Goldman Sachs doesn't exist in Dallas is just plainly not true.

[robertobaggio]

Originally Posted by HOAPRESIDENT

That is really unfair and inaccurate. Those banks that have an investment banking function mainly deal out of their New York office and may use liaison offices in satellite cities when there is an acquiring or target company there. But the main horsepower has always been in NYC and continues to be.

I have no doubt that they use their Houston office regularly due to the number of oil companies there. But to claim that Goldman Sachs doesn't exist in Dallas is just plainly not true.

Oil&Gas IB industry coverage groups are almost entirely based in Houston, not in NY.

Similarly, Tech coverage industry groups are based in Bay Area.

Those are not satellite offices (as maybe it's the case for L.A.), but rather those are the front office Investment Banking groups for those industries. Deals are executed from start to finish in those offices.

I only happen to work in one of them, but what would I know?

GS like all others in Dallas don't have Investment Banking. Only PWM and backoffice type of stuff.

[Eric Fred Norris]

saying dallas is world class is laughably absurd

[EDS_]

The question depends upon one's personal definition of world class.

To me the best thing about DFW is exactly that Dallas+Fort Worth+all of the other cool towns that make the place.

In this thread I've read that cities like Rome and Madrid are world class - frankly I'd agree.

Be honest. Would you rather live and work in these places or DFW considering relative real estate costs, easy access to top notch schooling, the ease of making a good living here v. the difficulty making a good living in Rome and the near impossibility of the same in Madrid?


World class I don't know or really care here are some + things for Dallas/DFW.

Air travel - is there a better big city set-up anywhere than DFW + Love Field?
Roads - traffic here is often terrible. That said our road system compares well to any very big metro anywhere.
Real estate - within how many really big cities can a dolt like me buy a .67 acre lot, 3,900 ft2 cool old school home within a few miles of the city nucleus for ~$800k? Houston maybe and that's about it-.
Where else could one find places like the Meyerson Symphony Center and Bass Hall within minutes of one another?
DMA, Kimball etc?
Need a world class meal - steak and duck fat fries at The Mansion
If it's so bad what is up with the legions of pro-athletes who live here?
Why do the titanically rich stay here?
Public transport - it's never going to be a big player here it's too hot and the 'plex is too big.


I'm staying here.

Finally, the list on the first page claiming Paris is the #1 financial city in the world - was the written by Alfred E. Neuman?

[Lakewooder]

True about the "titanically rich" - Dallas is number 9 for billionaires in the world. And it looks like we may be picking up a couple more Fortune 500 companies through M&A - sorry Houston.

[Eric Fred Norris]

the only people silly enough to say dallas is a world class city have obviously never lived/worked/traveled to the true world class cities across the globe. places like tokyo, brussels, madrid, chicago, toronto, new york, stockholm, istanbul, santiago, prague, etc.

places with cultural significance, hubs of financial services activity, premier universities, highly developed and efficient mass transit systems, etc.

we dont have any of that stuff. to deny that is simply out of touch with reality and yet another reason why ppl are justified in thinking chestbeaters from texas are naive blowhards

[Wonderful Jellal]

No, but bright future