RAYMOND JAMES WELCOMES A NEW RIA FIRM IN CARY, N.C. AFFILIATES WITH RAYMOND JAMES INVESTMENT ADVISOR DIVISION (IAD)
Bill Van Law, president of Raymond James Investment Advisors Division (IAD) announced the formation and affiliation of Emerald Asset Management, an independent investment advisory firm based in North Carolina.
The firm, which maintains offices in Cary and Rocky Mount, N.C. comprises founding managing partners, Robert A. Leggett, CFA®, CFP®, J.D., James B. Tharin, CFA®, and Clint W. Sorenson, CFA®, CMT®, as well as director of operations Grier Rubeling and operations manager Lisa Ingram.
“Welcoming Robert, James, Clint and their team to Raymond James is part of a continuing trend of larger fee-based teams departing wirehouses for the independent RIA model. It affords them more independence and flexibility to serve their clients and allows them to manage their clients’ assets as fiduciaries with the least conflict,” said Van Law. “We could not be more pleased they chose Raymond James to be their full-service custodian.”
“James and I have the exact same philosophy when it comes to serving our clients,” said Sorenson who, like Tharin, moved from Wells Fargo Advisors. ”We both decided in order to really help our clients control costs and manage risks the way we wanted, we needed to form our own RIA firm. Raymond James introduced us to Robert who was going through the exact same process at UBS and so together we formed Emerald Asset Management.”
“We looked at a number of custodians and found that at Raymond James we were able to access the same high level of resources and technology we were accustomed to, but work with a firm where the Private Client Group is its core business, where the advisor is treated as the firm’s client and where the relationships with our clients are really understood and valued.”
Emerald Asset Management is an asset manager specializing in building individualized investment strategies for both individuals and institutions. They have developed their own proprietary quantitative process that they use for building client investment portfolios. Prior to affiliating with Raymond James, the team, combined, managed over $200 million in client assets and had annual revenue in excess of $1.9 million.
