#Firm that commissioned ‘Fearless Girl’ statue is leaving NYC

The “Fearless Girl” outside the New York Stock Exchange is famous for holding her ground — but the financial firm that commissioned the plucky statue is packing up and leaving town.

State Street, a Boston-based investing behemoth, has told its workers they won’t be returning to their offices at Rockefeller Center, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Instead, the firm’s 500 Big Apple employees are being invited to either work from home or commute to State Street’s offices in New Jersey or Stamford, Conn.

State Street also will rent co-working spaces in the city for those workers who are interested while it sublets its posh office space in Midtown Manhattan, according to the report.

“We remain committed to our clients, our business lines, corporate functions and colleagues who work and live in New York City and the surrounding area,” State Street spokesperson Ed Patterson told The Post. “We have seen our employees adapt quickly to working remotely, and we intend to capture and adopt the new ways of working that have arisen during the COVID crisis.”

Meanwhile, the statue — which in 2018 moved to a spot outside the New York Stock Exchange from its original site opposite the “Charging Bull” statue — will stay put, according to the firm.

State Street said it will give its teams the ability to decide how often they should be going into the office and where. Employees have been mostly working from home since the outbreak in March 2020. In recent months, they’ve been allowed to return to the office in NYC as long as they observe health and safety guidelines.

State Street’s retreat comes as the Delta variant has thrown a wrench into companies’ return-to-office plans. Earlier this month, Wells Fargo and BlackRock announced they’re pushing back their return plans to October. JPMorgan recently announced it will once again require all employees, vaccinated or not, to wear masks at its offices nationwide amid rising cases of COVID-19.

At the same time, countless companies are fleeing NYC to avoid high taxes and pricey real estate. Top financial firms like Goldman Sachs and Elliott Management have moved jobs to tax havens like Florida over the past year.

State Street first told employees about the change in NYC real estate in May. Still, the firm told The Post it doesn’t believe clients will suffer.

“There will be no change to how we service clients in the city and surrounding area,” Patterson said. “We are happy our NYC-area employees, including members of our global executive leadership team who call New York home, have welcomed and are embracing our hybrid working model.”