July 13, 2018 – Louis Diamond Quoted – By Andrew Welsch and Jessica Mathews – Wells Fargo’s brokerage ranks continue to shrink, indicating that a long-running decline in advisor numbers has yet to come to an end.
Louis Diamond, a recruiter at Diamond Consultants, who has worked with Wells Fargo, anticipates the number of advisors exiting will slow down.
July 12, 2018 – Louis Diamond Quoted – By Michael Thrasher, WealthManagement.com – Janney Montgomery Scott, the regional broker/dealer based in Philadelphia that manages $80 billion in clients assets, hired 19 advisors and added another $3.1 billion in assets in the second quarter, keeping pace with its record growth at this time last year.
July 10, 2018 – Barbara Herman Quoted – By Thomas Coyle, Financial Advisor IQ – A recent state court ruling has cast doubt on a key provision of the Protocol for Broker Recruiting, putting more pressure on the already weakened advisor-recruiting agreement and erecting a new barrier in the form of “garden leaves” to FAs looking to take old clients to new firms, industry experts tell FA-IQ.
June 2, 2018 – Louis Diamond Quoted – By Tobias Salinger, Financial Planning – The number of financial advisors dropped by the largest independent broker-dealers has not exceeded the number gained in any of the past five years, in a signal that forecasts of shrinking head counts have not come to fruition. Advisors would still be wise to prepare for the belt-tightening, though.
June 29, 2018 – By Mindy Diamond – WealthManagement.com – There is an interesting trend emerging in the wealth management industry: banks and traditional brokerage firms starting to acquire registered independent advisory businesses. It should come as no surprise—as the proverbial puck heads toward independence with advisors large and small trading their W-2s for 1099s—that we’re seeing more of these two scenarios.
June 28, 2018 – Louis Diamond Quoted – By Jeff Benjamin, InvestmentNews – A fledgling New York-based financial advisory firm aims to make a big splash as a consolidator by baiting the hook with access to sophisticated investments.
June 25, 2018 – Louis Diamond Quoted – By Tobias Salinger, Financial Planning – Advisor Group’s second acquisition of the year carries the potential to make it bigger than any other independent broker-dealer network, while pushing its largest subsidiary into the top 10 firms in the space.
Some major questions loom over the success of the deal, though.
June 15, 2018 – Louis Diamond Quoted – By Michael Thrasher, WealthManagement.com – In wake of U.S. courts axing the Department of Labor’s retirement savings rule, Merrill Lynch told its field of more than 14,000 financial advisors on Friday that the brokerage is reevaluating its policies and procedures, especially those related to retirement accounts.
June 13, 2018 – Louis Diamond Quoted – By Bruce Kelly, Investment News – The biggest firms continue to lose groups of financial advisers that have billions of dollars worth of assets under management. These advisers are moving because they want to set up their own shops so they can own a business or to work at smaller rivals where they’ll get more autonomy and a nice bump in pay.
May 24, 2018 – Louis Diamond Quoted – By Brooke Southall, RIABiz – Focus Financial filed the paperwork to complete an initial public offering. The New York-based roll-up, which recorded revenues of $663 million in 2017 filed an S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Nasdaq symbol will be FOCS. No pricing information was given.
