January 21, 2022
Louis Diamond Quoted
By Miriam Rozen
A long-running trend of experienced broker attrition from wirehouses is ebbing, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo executives claimed in the past week.
But the advisor teams that do breakaway from the wirehouses continue to have an adverse impact since they leave with large chunks of assets, the recruiters said.
“We’re definitely still seeing them lose many advisors,” said Louis Diamond, a New Jersey-based recruiter. “But forget about the number of advisors that have left; it’s more about the size and caliber.”
Diamond said he has stopped paying attention to wirehouses’ reported broker headcount since it is not clear who they are counting, and a firm “can easily hire trainees and put people in bank branches without books of business and call that the same thing after they lose a $2 billion team,” he said.
