Mindy Diamond Quoted
By Lisa Shidler
HighTower Advisors LLC is officially back in the deal-making business, grabbing its largest breakaway in six months — a Philadelphia-area team with $650 million in assets.
HIghTower announced Tuesday that Gregory C. Sarian and Francis X. Masse II of The Sarian Group joined the firm as partners and managing directors. They left Merrill Lynch on Friday to join the Chicago-based RIA and combined have more than 35 years’ experience in the financial services industry. The assets are now primarily with Schwab Advisor Services for custody and Black Diamond is the chosen performance reporting system provider.
Merrill Lynch spokesman Matthew Card confirmed that the team had left but declined to comment further for this story.
Sarian was highly sought after by many other firms, says Mindy Diamond, chief executive of Diamond Consultants LLC, who helped engineer this deal.
“Greg was a lifer at Merrill,” Diamond says. “He was in growth mode and has an extraordinarily successful business. He had a million options to consider. He did the right amount of due diligence. You can imagine the size of transition packages that he was offered and turned down. It speaks volumes to HighTower and the entire independent landscape.”
