#LegalBytes: The Official Podcast of Cummings & Cummings Law

Attorney and CPA Chad D. Cummings notes that Ken Griffin is betting $3 billion that Miami needs a university, not only another headquarters. The gift is the largest an American university has received. About $1 billion supports Carnegie Mellon’s Pittsburgh campus, including a renamed Kenneth C. Griffin School of Computer Science. About $2 billion builds a 15-acre campus in Wynwood. Students are expected in 2029, roughly 1,200 undergraduates and graduates, concentrated on national security, health, climate resilience, and advanced manufacturing. Citadel moved from Chicago to Miami in 2022. Griffin is developing a roughly $2.5 billion headquarters and had already committed about $300 million across the metro area. Executives and capital arrive quickly. Engineers and founders take longer. Griffin wants graduates to stay, start companies, and pull the next class of talent. Florida and Texas impose no personal income tax. Redomestication can move an existing company without dissolving it. An office lease is a cycle. A campus is an attempt to keep the boom after the first wave of migrants is gone. Learn how to transfer a company to Florida: https://www.cummings.law/onboard/florida.html

Attorney and CPA Chad D. Cummings notes that JPMorgan Chase is betting on where wealth is moving inside Greater Houston, not only on downtown. The bank signed a lease at Hughes Landing in The Woodlands that lifts its office from about 67,000 square feet to about 157,000. The added space is for private wealth management and commercial banking. JPMorgan already had a temporary presence there, then a roughly 34,000-square-foot commercial banking lease in 2023. It is now more than doubling again, and it is still looking at the Energy Corridor, downtown, the Galleria, and southeast Houston. It opened a private banking office in Sugar Land in 2024. The bank already holds about $25.3 billion in local deposits as of June 30, 2025. It is not adding expensive bankers for symbolism. It is following businesses, entrepreneurs, and families into the suburbs. Texas financial growth is not only a Dallas story. Florida and Texas impose no personal income tax. Redomestication can move an existing company without dissolving it. Banks commit long-term space where they expect the next clients and the next assets to be. Learn how to transfer a company to Texas: https://www.cummings.law/onboard/texas.html

Attorney and CPA Chad D. Cummings notes that Florida is no longer waiting to be discovered. The Florida Chamber of Commerce is running a multimillion-dollar “Free Enterprise Florida” campaign on Chicago’s Interstate 55 that names Governor JB Pritzker runner-up for Florida Economic Developer of the Year. Chamber President Mark Wilson cites more than $2 billion of taxable income moving from Illinois to Florida and diverging population trends. The targets are specific: advanced manufacturing, aviation, and technology startups. Florida created a chief manufacturing officer to chase factory and headquarters dollars, not tourism slogans. Citadel’s move from Chicago to Miami is the visible precedent: payroll, executives, advisers, and the next hire follow the new center of gravity. The Chamber ran a similar effort in New York and says more states are coming. Companies do not pick locations in a vacuum. States now treat them as prospects. Florida and Texas impose no personal income tax. Redomestication can move an existing company without dissolving it. The billboards on the Stevenson Expressway are the loudest part of a recruitment strategy, not a joke. Learn how to transfer a corporation from Illinois to Florida: https://www.cummings.law/redomestication/redomesticate-corp-illinois-florida/

Attorney and CPA Chad D. Cummings notes that West Palm Beach is adding a talent pipeline, not just another tower. Vanderbilt has filed a complete master plan for a nine-acre graduate campus in the Government Hill district: nine buildings, more than 300,000 square feet of academic space, four buildings about ten stories, and about 1,000 graduate students in business and technology, targeted for 2029. The investment is more than $300 million. Companies and executives can move quickly. Specialized labor is the constraint that shows up next. A recurring class of graduates trained for finance, technology, and management changes whether the next expansion can be staffed locally instead of imported. Universities plan in decades, not lease cycles. Faculty, research, alumni, and employer relationships stay. Florida and Texas impose no personal income tax. Redomestication can move an existing company without dissolving it. When companies, capital, and a university occupy the same downtown, a migration story starts to look like a market. Learn how to transfer an LLC from Illinois to Florida: https://www.cummings.law/redomestication/redomesticate-llc-illinois-florida/

Attorney and CPA Chad D. Cummings notes that Morgan Stanley has chosen Dallas over Alpharetta, Georgia, for a new regional headquarters. Alpharetta already employs more than 3,000 Morgan Stanley people. Dallas still won about $684 million of direct investment and more than 3,800 new jobs. Texas is backing it with a $43.85 million Texas Enterprise Fund grant, the program’s largest financial-services award. The firm will occupy about 255,000 square feet at Fountain Place for a little more than four years, then move around 2031 into a new Uptown tower at 2401 McKinney Avenue under a 16-year lease. With Trammell Crow, total development is about $1.3 billion. Dallas previously approved incentives of up to $18.5 million. Banks pull lawyers, wealth managers, and risk professionals, which then pull the next bank. This is internal capital allocation, not flight from a city with no presence. Florida and Texas impose no personal income tax. Redomestication can move an existing company without dissolving it. A 16-year lease is how a financial center stops being a slogan. Learn how to transfer a corporation to Texas from New York: https://www.cummings.law/redomestication/redomesticate-corp-new-york-texas/

Attorney and CPA Chad D. Cummings notes that the Texas Stock Exchange has moved from a pitch to a working primary venue. On September 16, Texas Capital transferred two ETFs from the New York Stock Exchange to TXSE. The next day Westwood Holdings launched the first new ETF on the exchange. Two more funds followed. Primary corporate listings are scheduled to begin October 5. Energy Transfer, Sunoco, USA Compression Partners, Dillard’s, and Texas Capital Bancshares are among the companies expected to trade primarily there. NYSE Texas and Nasdaq Texas already operate from Dallas, so TXSE is competing with New York institutions that have planted Texas flags of their own. Early funds have local ties, but the Calamos Timpani Active SMID Growth ETF listed September 21 without a Texas investment thesis. A handful of listings is not a new Wall Street. It is the machinery of public capital moving closer to Texas companies. Florida and Texas impose no personal income tax. Redomestication can change a company’s legal home without dissolving it. The test is whether issuers choose Dallas because the market works, not because the company is from Texas. Learn about how to transfer an LLC from New York to Texas: https://www.cummings.law/redomestication/redomesticate-llc-new-york-texas/

Attorney and CPA Chad D. Cummings notes that Florida’s migration story now includes a defense-technology cluster, not just headquarters. The Wall Street Journal reports the state’s military and defense industry generates about $102.6 billion in economic impact and more than 865,000 jobs. Florida hosts major commands covering Latin America, the Middle East, and special operations, plus Space Coast launch sites, which puts companies next to customers and infrastructure. The state is investing nearly $23 million in its defense industrial base. Palantir moved its global headquarters to Miami. Space-Eyes and Terran Orbital illustrate the local pipeline; Lockheed Martin later acquired Terran Orbital. Vanderbilt is expanding its West Palm Beach graduate campus from 1,000 to 2,000 students, including defense and national-security programs. Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism office is one piece of that stack: capital, buyers, talent, and launch capacity in one place. Florida and Texas impose no personal income tax. Redomestication can move an existing company without dissolving it. Clusters last when the next company has a reason to start there, not merely open an office there. Learn how to transfer a corporation to Florida from Georgia: https://www.cummings.law/redomestication/redomesticate-corp-georgia-florida/

Attorney and CPA Chad D. Cummings notes that Andreessen Horowitz opening a West Palm Beach regional headquarters is more than another Florida lease. The Menlo Park firm signed a long-term lease at CityPlace Tower, 525 Okeechobee Boulevard, for occupancy in early 2027. It will house the $1.18 billion American Dynamism fund, which invests in defense and related national-interest technology. This is not a California exit. Katherine Boyle said the firm expects many of those companies to be built in Florida and wants to sit beside the founders. Related Ross has been assembling a South Florida technology, defense, and finance cluster, including an incubator and a $10 million campaign with Ken Griffin. Venture capital on the ground pulls lawyers, bankers, and the next founder. Florida and Texas impose no personal income tax. Redomestication can move an existing company without dissolving it. When the institutions that allocate capital relocate, the geography of new companies follows. Learn more about transferring an LLC to Florida from Georgia: https://www.cummings.law/redomestication/redomesticate-llc-georgia-florida/

Attorney and CPA Chad D. Cummings notes that Maryland’s Family and Medical Leave Insurance program hits payroll directly. Employers with at least one Maryland-based employee must register. Contributions start January 1, 2027. Benefits start January 1, 2028. The initial state-plan rate is 0.9 percent of wages up to the Social Security cap. Employers may withhold up to 0.45 percent from employees. Firms with 15 or more workers fund the rest. Smaller employers pay less. Existing health or disability coverage does not opt you out. Eligible employees can take up to 12 weeks of paid, job-protected leave beginning in 2028, with benefits up to $1,000 a week after 680 hours worked in Maryland. Quarterly wage reporting starts in 2027. For a ten-person shop, the harder cost is covering a key employee whose job cannot be filled overnight. Changing the company’s charter does not erase Maryland employment rules if the work is still localized there. If the owner, staff, and operations have actually left, the legal home should be reviewed. Florida and Texas impose no personal income tax. Redomestication can move the existing company without dissolving it. Domicile should follow where the next worker and the next dollar will sit, not where the formation papers were filed. Learn more about how to transfer a Maryland corporation to another state: https://www.cummings.law/redomestication/move-business-out-of-maryland/

Attorney and CPA Chad D. Cummings notes that Maryland’s Building Energy Performance Standards belong in any stay-or-leave analysis for owners of large buildings. The rules cover most commercial and multifamily properties of 35,000 square feet or more: benchmark energy use, tighter direct-emissions limits beginning in 2030, and net-zero direct emissions by 2040. The alternative-compliance payment starts at $230 per metric ton of excess carbon dioxide equivalent in 2030 and rises. A Washington Times opinion cites one operator of nearly 2,000 apartments estimating at least $40,000 per unit and about $400 more in rent, plus millions to replace gas equipment in a large building. Those are industry figures, not state projections. Changing the company’s charter does not erase the rules if you still own or occupy a covered Maryland building. What often moves first is the next warehouse, project, or headquarters dollar. Florida and Texas impose no personal income tax. Redomestication can align the legal home with where the business is actually run without dissolving the company. Sequence it: what stays attached to Maryland property, what can move, then whether domicile should follow. Learn more about how to transfer an LLC out of Maryland: https://www.cummings.law/redomestication/move-business-out-of-maryland