Texas is opening a dedicated London office this month as it tries to pull more jobs and investment out of Britain and into the state. The new site, which Texas recently secured approval for, will be led by James Taylor, one of the founders of the Austin-based lobbying and public relations firm Vianovo.
The launch is part of a push that will see Linda McMahon, head of the Dallas Economic Development Corporation, travel to London in mid-April with a delegation of local lobbyists. Texas charges neither corporation tax nor income tax, and the people opening the office are expected to use that pitch to court UK bosses with fast-track business courts and multimillion-dollar subsidies.
The targets are likely to include the City’s banks and investment houses, a sign that Texas wants more than manufacturers and warehouse operators. McMahon said she is working with a company that wants to move manufacturing from the Netherlands, and said she had met firms looking to relocate from Ukraine as well as businesses drawn by the state’s ties to Chinese and Korean companies.
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Texas has spent years expanding its reach beyond the United States, opening international offices in Mexico and Taiwan while using incentives and a low-tax environment to lure companies from elsewhere. The state has already won jobs and investment from California, Delaware and New York, and now has the largest number of Fortune 500 company headquarters of any American state. Oracle moved from Silicon Valley to Austin in 2020, Tesla, X Corp and SpaceX have shifted from California in recent years, and ExxonMobil said last month it would move its base to Texas from New Jersey.
The London push also lands as Britain tries to stop companies from leaving its stock market for private ownership or overseas listings, including in New York. Texas officials see a chance to sell Dallas as “Y’all Street” and build on the region’s financial-sector growth. Susan Langley, who traveled to Dallas in February, wrote after the visit that the launch of the Texas Stock Exchange could create dual-listing opportunities linking British and Texan firms to fresh capital. McMahon put the broader pitch more bluntly: “We’ve got the makeup, we’ve [got] the ingredients to continue to push and grow our international footprint,” though she added that Dallas is not yet as widely recognized for that activity as it should be. That is the point of the London office: Texas wants to be known in the same rooms where Britain’s capital talks money, and it is betting that a lighter tax bill and a stronger sales pitch will be enough to bring some of that business home.
