Brian Casey was in New York recently when he told a reporter from a prominent newspaper what he believes about his hometown. “Dallas will be the center of the financial universe in 10 years,” he said.
The reporter laughed in his face.
Casey wasn’t bothered. “It will happen,” he told Y’all Street host Evan Delaune. “It’s happening right in front of our eyes.”
Casey has earned the right to make the call. He is the CEO of Westwood Holdings Group, a publicly traded investment firm in Dallas, and he has worked in Texas finance for more than 40 years, long before anyone considered it a financial center.
From Banishment to Destination
Casey likes to point to Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker, which follows a class of Salomon Brothers trainees. When it came time to hand out assignments, everyone wanted New York, San Francisco, Chicago, or Miami. Getting equities in Dallas meant you had been banished.
“It’s gone from that, equities in Dallas, where nobody wanted to be, to now people actually want to move here,” Casey said. Every major financial services firm is opening a significant office in Texas. JPMorgan, he noted, now employs more financial professionals in Texas than in New York.
“Dallas will be the center of the financial universe in 10 years. It will happen. It’s happening right in front of our eyes.”
– Brian Casey
He credits the culture as much as the economics. Firms in Dallas compete, but they also help each other. “You know that’s not happening in New York,” he said. He also points to DFW Airport, opened in the 1970s and now one of the busiest in the world. From Dallas, he can fly to Los Angeles or New York for lunch and be home the same night.
A Lifetime of Hustle
Casey grew up in Dallas with parents who expected him to work. Starting at 12, he mowed lawns, washed cars and windows, worked at the mall, and worked in construction. He held about 25 jobs before his first professional job as a financial planner in 1985.
His break came from persistence. He kept calling on a local trust company, and while it never bought anything from him, it was impressed enough to hire him. In 1992, he joined Westwood, the firm Susan Byrne founded in New York, and moved to Dallas after she married a Texan. By 1996 he was running its wealth business, often meeting clients twice his age. In 2006 he became CEO.
His formula hasn’t changed: be the first one in and the last one to leave.
First on the Texas Stock Exchange
That same instinct to show up early shaped Westwood’s role in Texas’s newest financial institution. When the Texas Stock Exchange began raising capital, Westwood signed on as the only publicly traded asset and wealth manager on its original cap table.
In 2026, Westwood listed the first ETF on the exchange, the Westwood PowerX ETF. The exchange brought its 800-pound bell to Westwood’s office for the launch. It wouldn’t fit through the front door, so crews took the door off its hinges. “No one else can ever be first,” Casey said. “It’s Westwood.”
The Power Behind AI
PowerX is built on a thesis Casey describes in plain terms: “It doesn’t matter how fast your chip is if you don’t have the power to run it.”
Most AI investing focuses on chips and the cloud giants. Casey, a value investor, has seen this pattern before. In the late 1990s, some tech companies looked a lot like today’s AI leaders, and they gave back almost all their gains. Chips are cyclical, he says. Power is a 10-year secular build-out.
“It doesn’t matter how fast your chip is if you don’t have the power to run it.”
– Brian Casey
So PowerX owns the “picks and shovels”: natural gas, utilities, water, solar, servers, and the massive gas turbines that companies like GE Vernova build. Order one today, Casey said, and “we will be lucky to get it by 2031.” These aren’t chips in a lab. “These are the things you can drop on your foot and they hurt.”
Preparing the Next Generation
Westwood’s newest shift may be its most personal. Its wealth business is becoming a multifamily office for families with $25 million to $100 million, and the focus goes beyond investments to family governance and estate planning.
Casey says he has been stunned by how many highly successful families have never discussed what happens to their wealth. “They haven’t thought for two seconds about what their mission is or how they can best pass these assets on to their kids,” he said. He encourages families to hold regular meetings and decide whether their legacy is just money or a cause.
It’s the same advice Casey follows in business: plan early, and don’t wait for everyone else to agree with you. Texas spent decades as an afterthought in finance. Casey bet on it anyway.
Watch Brian Casey explain why Dallas is becoming Wall Street’s next home on Episode 54 of Y’all Street.
