Februay 24, 2023
By Andrew Welsch
A Merrill Lynch team that managed nearly $1.5 billion in assets and has longstanding ties to the wirehouse left to launch an independent practice with Sanctuary Wealth.
The seven-person team, which calls itself Chappell Wealth Management, is led by brothers Brent and Brad Chappell. They are based in The Woodlands, a suburb of Houston. Moving with them are managing partners Michael Mills and Spencer Carlson.
The group is the 17th advisor team in Texas to sign with Sanctuary. It’s also the largest wirehouse breakaway team to join Sanctuary since the Indianapolis-based firm was launched by former CEO Jim Dickson in 2018.
The Chappell brothers tell Barron’s Advisor they wanted to move to the independent advisor sector to have access to better technology and a wider range of investments, among other reasons. “We can wake up every day and scour the marketplace for the best solutions,” Brent Chappell says.
The advisors picked Sanctuary because of the support the firm offers advisors in going independent.
“We liked Sanctuary’s model, which is kind of independence, but not alone,” he says. “We don’t want, for example, to do all of our compliance. We’d rather have someone else take care of that so we can focus on the more important things to us, which includes taking care
of clients.”
It also helped the team knows Sanctuary Wealth President Vince Fertitta, who previously worked as an executive at Merrill Lynch.
