Mindy Diamond Quoted
By Trevor Hunnicutt
Focus has been actively looking to facilitate breakaway deals by helping wirehouse teams form their own firms or join existing Focus partners.
In the largest announced deal of its kind this year, a group of financial advisers who managed $1 billion in assets at UBS Wealth Management Americas left the massive Swiss-owned brokerage to start an independent firm with offices in the Western United States.
Terms of the cash-and-equity deal were not disclosed, but the team left UBS despite owing the firm money and being entitled to deferred compensation had they stayed, according to Mindy Diamond, president of Diamond Consultants, a recruiter who worked on the deal. Ms. Diamond also said the team entertained a lucrative deal from Merrill Lynch, the Bank of America Corp.-owned wirehouse, but decided that they would “largely be trading one set of problems for another” by moving to a similar firm.
