Recruiters salivate as Greg Fleming completes marriage to Rockefeller & Co. to fill ‘HighTower’ void but now begins the wait for a business model
March 9, 2018
Louis Diamond Quoted
By James Picerno
It’s the most ambitious roll-up startup and Wall Street takedown play since Elliot Weissbluth unleashed HighTower Advisors LLC 11 years ago — if a yesteryear wirehouse chief overhauling a living fossil of a firm with a mountain of capital, fresh and dusty, can be labeled in that way, observers say on and off the record.
The glass-half-full take on the Fleming launch is its right-place, right-brand, right-time, right leadership and very right resources — namely capital — potential to step into a void left by Chicago-based HighTower, which has pivoted away from wirehouse recruiting in favor of becoming an RIA roll-up under a single corporate RIA.
That mixture of attributes puts arrows in big recruiters’ quivers that haven’t really existed for years, says Louis Diamond, New York-based principal with Diamond Consultants.
“Given [Fleming’s] reputation and connectivity in the wirehouse world, I think he will be very successful. The quasi-independent space where Rockefeller fits has been waiting for a model like this since Hightower changed its course.”
