By Louis Diamond – While the financial advisory profession is still largely a meritocracy, your production and book of business no longer solely dictate how attractive you are to prospective employers. As wirehouses have scaled back on hiring advisors (not entirely by choice), regional firms, boutiques and independent platforms now control the recruiting market. The result? Cultural fit and likeability can make or break a deal.
Louis Diamond Quoted – By Lisa Shidler, RIABiz – Facing the prospect of reps with tens of billions of managed assets marching for the door, LPL Financial is slashing fees. Last week, the Fort Mill, S.C.-based independent broker-dealer announced it was reducing its administrative fee to a flat eight basis points for advisors using the corporate platform who manage $25 million to $50 million amid other inducements. In fact, the price cut may have been dictated by the OSJs that use LPL, says Louis Diamond, New York-based principal of Diamond Consultants, in an email.
Louis Diamond Quoted – By Lisa Shidler, RIABiz – LPL Financial has declared “war” on three broker-dealers that recruiters say drove a wedge between the giant broker-dealer and the advisors it sought to acquire from its new acquisition, National Planning Holdings Inc.
Louis Diamond Quoted – By Brooke Southall, RIABiz – Every inch of the way, Jeff Maurer has built Evercore Wealth Management LLC his way, which is to say he has relentlessly recruited advisors, executives and their assets from ultrahigh-net-worth units of national banks. What the former CEO of U.S. Trust mostly refrained from doing in taking his New York-based RIA startup to just over $7.3 billion in AUM, according to its March 30 ADV, and is buying talent and assets by acquiring RIAs.
By Louis Diamond – The conversations around movement to the independent space often center around the “big picture”: The opportunity for an advisor to get out from under the auspices of a larger firm to build an enterprise and legacy based on his own vision and terms.
Louis Diamond Quoted – By Lisa Shidler, RIABiz – Ten years after it was bought by Bank of America, Merrill Lynch is no longer the fastest growing portion of the business. That laurel goes to its younger sibling: eight-year-old Merrill Edge, which may stir broker resentment that bank brass is — this time around — prepared to live with. Despite BoA executives’ rose-colored view of relations between two entities, Louis Diamond, principal recruiter of Diamond Consultants in New York says the situation is still filled with tension.
Louis Diamond Quoted – By Thomas Coyle, Financial Advisor IQ – One reason Wells Fargo Advisors, the securities arm of Wells Fargo & Company, remains in the Protocol for Broker Recruiting is it can rely on a sister enterprise – a vast and high-profile retail banking channel – to help it capture assets that aren’t covered by the agreement, sources say. For recruiter Louis Diamond, WFA’s link to a well-known, multi-branch consumer bank is why it can “afford” to stay in the protocol even as veteran advisors with large books of business break away to join or start independent firms in numbers enough — it’s generally thought — to offset net gains.
Louis Diamond Quoted – By James Picerno, RIABiz – 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.
Louis Diamond Quoted – By Tobias Salinger, Financial Planning – Cetera Financial Group’s more than 7,700 advisors across six independent broker-dealers may soon face yet another big change: new ownership. “It was inevitable that there would be some sort of a change in ownership,” says Louis Diamond, who adds that he expects a PE firm to be the buyer. “Any time there is change it’s an opportunity for an advisor, especially an independent one, to figure out if they’re in the best possible place for their clients.”
Louis Diamond Quoted – By Oisin Breen, RIABiz – As part of a single sweep of 2018 transactions, a mezzanine RIA in Steel City purchased Cantor Fitzgerald’s first, best and last RIA asset and, in the process, became the advisor to the area’s largest employer’s 401(k) plan. D.B. Root & Co. LLC is now a ballpark $5.2 billion player with a vastly enlarged presence in the retirement business. The AUM comes with an asterisk because about $4.5 billion is still to be paid for next January. What’s the deal?
