Louis Diamond Quoted
By Brooke Southall
From Morgan Stanley’s perspective, Phil Shaffer never should have walked out the door with $4 billion to $5 billion of client assets and a whole team to staff his new RIA, Halite Partners LLC.
The New York-based wirehouse wanted to keep the Barron’s-ranked super-producer for more than just his substantial assets and revenues. Shaffer was family, having co-founded the elite Graystone Consulting-branded unit inside Morgan Stanley.
Back in New York, recruiter Louis Diamond’s high-concept risk assessment of short-term consequences was as follows: “This is a big deal for RIAs and IBDs. They can be brought into a lawsuit.”l
“We think it’ll encourage new people to leave wirehouses because of the message it sends,” says Diamond. That message being, “We see you as a commodity.”