Seattle investment bank CEO makes Austin home, office

The CEO of an investment bank relocated himself and a large portion of his firm to Austin.

Michael Butler, the chairman and CEO of Cascadia Capital, moved from Seattle to Las Cimas Office Park, west of Austin’s downtown, the Austin Business Journal reported. Butler said he is anticipating more growth opportunities in the Sun Belt and inland states.

“We want to be first. We want to move fast,” Butler told the outlet. “We think other people will come to the same conclusion. We’re not smarter than anyone else. We just took the jump a little bit earlier.”

Even though the chairman and CEO moved to Texas, Cascadia will still be headquartered in Seattle. The bank, which has about 85 employees, also has offices in Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Nashville.

“I run the firm, so we’re going to run it from here, but Seattle is still our headquarters,” Butler told the outlet. “We want access to great talent. We want to be near where the growth is. And we view this market as a large, growing, inefficient market. There are not a lot of investment banks on the ground here. We think we can be the first and create something of scale.”

Butler said his plans for the investment bank involve increasing the company’s $85 million revenue to $150 million or $200 million. He said the Texas capital has “a really broad and deep technology sector” that he is hoping to tap into. Moving Cascadia’s office to a central location will make it easier for the bank to reach metropolitan areas like Chicago and New York, he said.
Five or six employees will join Butler in Austin, including associate Meredith Mann.

“When I started my career, everybody wanted to be on the East Coast,” Butler said.

“Then everyone wanted to be on the West Coast in Seattle, San Francisco and L.A. I think in the next 20 years, everyone’s going to want to be in the middle of the country.”

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