More banks are building real capacity outside Manhattan. Here is how to tell whether a regional offer is a true deal seat, what the pay looks like once you adjust for where you live, and how the move shapes your next one.
For most of the last fifty years, the career advice for an ambitious banker was simple: get to New York and stay there. That advice is getting harder to give with a straight face.
Goldman Sachs is building an 800,000-square-foot campus in Dallas, at a cost of about $700 million, with space to eventually hold more than 5,000 local workers when it opens in 2028. Dallas is already Goldman’s second-largest U.S. office after its Manhattan headquarters, and the firm has been there since 1968. The partner who runs the office calls the city “the beating heart of Y’all Street.” The Texas Stock Exchange, backed by Goldman and BlackRock, began trading in July, and both the NYSE and Nasdaq have opened Texas outposts. NYSE President Lynn Martin put it bluntly: “Texas has actually become our biggest state.”
New York is not shrinking to make room. New York City securities employment reached 207,400 in 2025, the highest level since the data series began in 2000, according to the New York State Comptroller. What is changing is that bankers now get serious offers in Dallas, Houston, Charlotte, Chicago, Miami and other cities, and many of them are not sure how to judge those offers against a New York seat.
Below is a recruiter’s way to think about it, using public data and the results of Prospect Rock Partners’ own 2025 Investment Banking Compensation Survey, which covers 806 clean responses from active investment bankers across eight regions and eight bank types.
Not every regional seat is a deal seat
The first question is not about the city. It is about the job. A bank’s headcount in a city tells you very little about how many investment bankers sit there.
JPMorganChase is a good example. The bank has about 32,000 employees in Texas, including more than 17,000 in Dallas-Fort Worth and 13,000 at its Plano campus. Its newest office in Frisco will house 120 bankers, but they work in Commercial Banking, the Private Bank and Select Wealth Management, not M&A. Wells Fargo opened a 22-acre Dallas campus for 4,500 workers, and Bank of America is building a 30-story tower in Dallas while keeping its headquarters in Charlotte. These are large commitments to a region. They are not, on their own, proof of a large advisory team.
When a regional offer comes in, sort it into one of three buckets:
- A true coverage or product seat. You sit with a group that originates and executes deals, the senior bankers who own the client relationships are in the same office or travel there often, and your name goes on the deal team.
- A satellite of a New York group. The senior bankers are elsewhere, the regional team supports them, and your staffing depends on what New York sends you. These can be fine seats, but your visibility runs through people you rarely see.
- A neighboring business with a banking title. Commercial banking, wealth management, corporate banking or operations roles that use similar language but have different career paths and pay structures.
The title on the offer letter may be the same in all three. The career is not.
What the pay data shows
The most common assumption we hear is that leaving New York means taking a pay cut. Our 2025 survey says that is too simple, at least through the VP years.
At VP 1, the median total compensation in New York was $525K. It was also $525K in the Midwest and Northern California, and $530K in Texas (on a small sample of three). In the South, it was $462K. At VP 3, the Midwest median ($740K, five respondents) came in above New York ($700K). In other words, at the VP level, a regional seat at the right firm often pays close to New York in nominal terms.
| Level (2025 median total comp) | New York | Midwest | N. California | Texas | South |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VP 1 | $525K | $525K | $525K | $530K* | $462K |
| VP 2 | $565K | $475K | $615K | $575K* | $535K |
| VP 3 | $700K | $740K | $353K* | $565K | $562K* |
| MD (4+ years) | $1,500K | $650K* | $480K* | $1,255K* | $662K* |
Two cautions matter here. First, the samples outside New York are thin. New York accounted for 554 respondents, or 64% of the survey. Texas accounted for 32 and the South for 31, across all levels. Regional figures are directional, not benchmarks.
Second, the gap tends to open at the top. Experienced MDs in New York reported a median of $1,500K. The handful of senior MDs we heard from in other regions mostly reported less, often because they sit at regional banks, boutiques or non-traditional platforms rather than at bulge brackets or elite boutiques. The lesson is not that regional MDs earn less by rule. It is that the firm and platform matter more than the city, and that the very top of the pay range is still most concentrated in New York.
Cost of living, taxes and the real number
Nominal pay is only half of the comparison. The same dollar buys very different lives in different cities.
Our report applies regional cost-of-living indices drawn from the C2ER cost of living index, with New York set at 100. On that basis, the Midwest sits at about 61, Texas at 56 and the South at 51. A Midwest VP 1 earning $525K, the same as the New York median, has roughly the purchasing power of $861K in New York. A Midwest VP 3 at $740K works out to about $1,213K in New York terms. Texas figures look even stronger on paper (a VP 2 at $575K adjusts to just over $1 million), but they rest on very small samples and are best read as illustrations.
Taxes widen the gap further. Texas has no state income tax. The combined New York State and City top marginal rate is roughly 10.9%, and California’s top rate is 13.3% on income above $1 million. Our cost-of-living figures do not include taxes, which can move effective pay by several more percentage points in either direction.
Three practical notes on using these numbers:
- Indices are blunt. Chicago is more expensive than the Midwest average, and a house in a top Dallas school district costs far more than the Texas index suggests. Price your own life, not the average.
- Purchasing power is not portable. If you expect to move back to New York in three years, the cost-of-living gain is temporary, while any gap in your title or deal record is not.
- Compare cash, not headlines. Deferrals rise with seniority. In our survey, a VP 1 at $500K total took home about $447K in year-one cash, and an experienced MD at $1,100K took home about $887K. Two offers with the same headline number can look very different once you account for deferral schedules.
Sponsorship, deal flow and your next move
Pay is easy to compare. The harder question is what a regional seat does to your career two or three moves from now. That depends on your level.
Analysts and associates should care most about training and staffing. A small office with a strong senior banker can be a better place to learn than a large floor where you never see the client. But ask how many live deals the office ran last year, who staffs them and whether junior bankers in the region are pulled onto New York deals or left to fill in work no one else wants.
VPs are at the point where sponsorship starts to decide promotions. In a regional office, the person who will argue for you at year end may be the office head, a New York group head or both. Find out which before you accept, and find out how the last two regional VPs were promoted.
Directors and MDs are judged on revenue and relationships. A regional move can make sense if the clients are actually there. Texas, for example, has more Fortune 500 companies than California or New York, and a banker who covers companies in his or her own backyard can see them more often. The risk at this level is building a book that is too local to carry if you move again.
For lateral moves later on, a regional seat reads well when it comes with a clear deal list, a recognizable group and senior bankers who will vouch for you. It reads less well when it looks like a support role, or when your deal experience is hard to tie back to a sector. The city is rarely the problem. The story is.
Timing the move
Relocations follow the same calendar as any other lateral move, and the constraints get tighter with seniority.
In our survey, 77% of executive directors and 89% of MDs with one to three years in the seat faced notice periods of two months or more. At VP 1, it was 24%. That is why most senior moves cluster in the weeks after bonuses are paid, roughly February through April, with start dates landing in the spring and summer. Clawbacks also rise at the top: 34% of experienced MDs reported a clawback provision, compared with 8% at VP 1.
If you are relocating as well as changing firms, build in time for the move itself. Ask whether the firm covers relocation, whether it will buy out deferred pay you leave behind, and how your notice period and any garden leave line up with your family’s schedule.
It is also worth knowing you are not alone. In our survey, 64% of bankers said they were open to a move or actively considering one. Regional offices are competing for the same people, which gives a strong candidate room to ask hard questions.
Questions to ask before you say yes
- Who are the senior bankers in this office, and which client relationships do they own here?
- How many deals did this office lead last year, and how many were run from New York with local support?
- Who decides my bonus and my promotion, and where do they sit?
- How have the last few people at my level in this office been promoted, or where did they go?
- Is my pay benchmarked to this market or to New York, and will that change if I move offices again?
- What is the deferral schedule, and will you replace what I forfeit?
Good regional teams expect these questions and usually have clear answers. A recruiter who knows the office can often fill in what the interview process leaves out.
What it means for your career
A seat outside New York is no longer a detour by default. At the VP level, our data shows regional pay at the right firms is often close to New York in nominal terms and well ahead of it once you account for cost of living and taxes. Banks are putting real money into Dallas and other cities, and the clients are often there.
But the decision still comes down to the seat, not the skyline. A true deal seat with a senior sponsor in Dallas or Chicago can be a better career move than a back-row seat in Manhattan. A support role with a banking title, in any city, could make your next lateral harder. If you are weighing a regional offer, judge the job first, the pay second and the city third, and get an outside view before you sign.
Related reading
- Prospect Rock Partners 2025 IB Compensation Report
- Why Applying Directly Can Hurt Your Lateral Banking Search
- Bonus Season Preview: Record Profits, Rising Pay and the Strongest Hiring Since 2000
Sources
- Prospect Rock Partners, 2025 Investment Banking Compensation Report (March 2026; 866 respondents, 806 clean records): prospectrockpartners.com
- NPR, Goldman Sachs Dallas campus, Texas Stock Exchange, NYSE and Nasdaq in Texas (Aug. 4, 2026): npr.org
- JPMorganChase, Frisco office press release (Aug. 27, 2026): jpmorganchase.com
- Fox Business via AOL, “Why major financial firms are expanding Texas presence beyond traditional Wall Street hub”: aol.com
- New York State Comptroller via Bronx.com, NYC securities employment 2025: bronx.com