Next year, Fidelity Investments will move from Lower Manhattan to Jersey City, Deloitte & Touche, the auditing and financial advisory firm, is also leaving the area, for Rockefeller Center, while a neighbor, the Japanese bank Nomura, appears headed to Midtown, according to an article in today's edition of The New York Times by Charles V. Bagli.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation moved to the Empire State Building from Lower Manhattan last year, the article said, and next year, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, which clears and trades securities for many brokerages and banks, will move the bulk of its operations and 1,400 employees to Jersey City.

Both American International Group and Merrill Lynch, once among the largest employers in the area, are shrinking. So the loss of Deloitte, and possibly Nomura, is a blow to Lower Manhattan, some real estate executives say, especially with at least two skyscrapers being built at ground zero.

"The situation with Nomura and Deloitte isn't the end of the world," said Peter G. Riguardi, president of New York operations for Jones Lang LaSalle, a commercial real estate broker. "But it's disappointing, a setback."

The departure of such major companies from the city's financial district, the article said, "has in the past led to hand-wringing by planners, politicians and landlords about the dubious future of Lower Manhattan," but "this time, the news has been greeted with as many yawns as laments."

Finance still dominates the neighborhood, but "the residential population has more than doubled since Sept. 11, and the number of hotels has tripled to 18. More important, there are a growing number of law firms, tech companies and nonprofit organizations moving into the district. Among the 60 media firms that now, or soon will, call Lower Manhattan their home are Newsweek, which recently merged with The Daily Beast; The Daily News and American Media Inc., publisher of The National Enquirer, Playboy and other titles. Cond¿ Nast Publications is negotiating a 1 million-square-foot lease at 1 World Trade Center, the skyscraper under construction at ground zero. And the number of tourists continues to swell."

"You never want anyone to leave," said Elizabeth H. Berger, president of the Alliance for Downtown New York. "But the real story is that while financial services remains our signature industry, Lower Manhattan has diversified. The bottom line is we're a very attractive place for a lot of different kinds of commercial tenants."

More than 40 percent of residents walk to work, Ms. Berger said.

Goldman Sachs, the article noted, recently built a new headquarters for thousands of employees and Oppenheimer Funds, Dow Jones and Commerzbank, whose leases expire soon, are expected to remain in Lower Manhattan while Morgan Stanley, whose headquarters is in Times Square, is looking for more space there.

For many city officials, landlords and real estate executives, the article said that "the idea that Deloitte and Nomura would remain in the financial district was a foregone conclusion. Last August, the Bloomberg administration agreed to provide Deloitte with up to $21 million in tax breaks to expand its payroll, with the understanding that it would enlarge its presence at the World Financial Center. It would take as much as 630,000 square feet as it moved its world and United States headquarters from Midtown to Lower Manhattan. But in December, Deloitte began to focus on Rockefeller Center, which offered more prestigious, but older and presumably more expensive office space in Midtown.

Nomura had also nearly renewed its lease at the World Financial Center when the bank opened talks with the owner of Worldwide Plaza, an office tower on Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets. Nomura's current landlord, Brookfield Office Properties, is still battling to keep the bank downtown.