By Joshua Fechter, San Antonio Express-News
January 10, 2019
Investment management firm Victory Capital Holdings Inc. will move its corporate headquarters from Cleveland to San Antonio, building off a recent acquisition of an arm of USAA and adding 50 jobs in coming years.
Victory Capital will keep 300 employees from its November acquisition of USAA’s investment-management unit, move CEO David Brown and five other senior executives here and create at least 50 new jobs paying an average base salary of $96,000, according to officials with the company, city and San Antonio Economic Development Foundation (SAEDF).
The headquarters is another get for the local financial services industry, where employment has grown by double digits since 2010.
San Antonio and Bexar County officials have agreed to give Victory Capital $750,000 in tax incentives for the move.
“We’re thrilled that they’ve chosen to relocate their headquarters in San Antonio,” City Manager Sheryl Sculley said in a phone interview. “We remain committed to supporting the company’s growth.”
Victory Capital agreed to buy USAA Asset Management Co. from the San Antonio financial-service company for at least $850 million in November. The publicly-traded firm, which currently manages $52.8 billion in assets, will manage $144 billion in assets when the deal finalizes later this year, Brown said.
Though the USAA acquisition played a large part in Victory Capital’s decision to move to San Antonio, Brown said the area’s 160,000 college students, population growth particularly among millennials, low cost of living and information technology presence sealed the deal.
“It’s an area where, when you stack that up against a lot of different areas in the country, it scores out really well,” Brown said of the San Antonio region.
Victory Capital hasn’t decided where it will locate in San Antonio but plans to open in mid-2019.
The firm, which spun off of Cleveland banking company KeyCorp in 2013, will keep a presence in Cleveland along with its nine offices from San Francisco to Boston, Brown said.
San Antonio City Council members are expected to vote on a $500,000 economic development grant to Victory Capital at their Jan. 17 meeting. Bexar County commissioners will take up a separate $250,000 grant when they meet Tuesday.
Asked whether Victory Capital would have picked San Antonio for its headquarters without the $750,000 incentives package, Brown said the company didn’t evaluate the move without accounting for incentives.
“I would just tell you the San Antonio market really fits what we’re looking to do,” Brown said. “The incentives were additive to it.”
