October 5, 2021
Greenville, SC.
A five-person Greenville, South Carolina workforce, led by two Merrill Lynch lifers, left the wirehouse for Raymond James & Associates on September 29, in keeping with their new agency’s web site and BrokerCheck information.
Their departure follows a handful of 2021 dealer exits from the identical Merrill workplace in Greenville, a city with a inhabitants below 70,000 situated within the northwestern nook of the state.
The newest departures embody lifers Benjamin Clauss, who started at Merrill in 1998 and William Douglas Ellison, who started on the agency in 1994. They moved together with a 3rd advisor, Brad Larue, who began within the business at Merrill in 2018, and two shopper associates, Amanda Wooden and Cathy Logan.
The workforce had at Merrill about $618 million in shopper property, in keeping with Barron’s, which put Clauss on its nationwide high 1,200 advisor roster for 2021.
Spokespeople at Raymond James and Merrill didn’t reply to requests for remark. Clauss and Ellison, the 2 workforce leaders, additionally didn’t return emails looking for remark.
The Greenville workplace at present has round 20 brokers, excluding the Clauss workforce, in keeping with its web site. Not less than six others have left because the begin of the yr, in keeping with a tally of publicly introduced strikes and evaluate of earlier variations of the department web site.
In April, a four-broker workforce left to launch an impartial follow affiliated with LPL Monetary’s fledgling Strategic Wealth Companies mannequin for wirehouse breakaways.
The group, which is named NorthEnd Non-public Wealth, consists of William Joshua (Josh) Brown, Scott Thompson, Joel Grey and James “Jake” Cluverius, Jr., had managed $650 million in shopper property at Merrill, in keeping with an LPL announcement on the time.
In two different beforehand unreported strikes in April, Jonathan Hungerford, an 18-year dealer, and John R. Ross, who had 17 years of expertise, left for Wells Fargo Advisors’ impartial Monetary Community brokerage, in keeping with BrokerCheck. Neither Hungerford nor Ross responded to requests despatched by way of social media in regards to the transfer or their follow.
Louis Diamond, an business recruiter in Morristown, New Jersey, who positioned the NorthEnd workforce, stated that usually in comparatively smaller markets, one workforce’s huge departure can spur some extra attrition.
“We do see this occur in smaller markets the place advisors see a cornerstone workforce depart and all the sudden their ears start to perk up considering that they have to be lacking one thing if a high workforce headed for the exit,” Diamond wrote.
Raymond James Monetary has been ramping up its recruiting efforts with sweetened recruiting bonuses for groups becoming a member of its worker channel. It additionally final week plucked two Merrill groups in Texas because it regarded to usher in prospects earlier than the shut of its 2020 fiscal yr on September 30.