September 23, 2021
A 15-year veteran Merrill Lynch Wealth Administration dealer in Grosse Pointe, Michigan jumped to UBS Wealth Administration USA on Sept. 17, bringing a four-year dealer and wealth technique affiliate with him however with a companion staying behind.
Kevin E. Butler, who began within the trade at Morgan Stanley in 2005 and joined Merrill one yr later, had $216 million in shopper belongings and $1.three million in annual manufacturing, in keeping with a supply acquainted with his follow. He had additionally been a producing supervisor overseeing the Grosse Pointe department, in keeping with his former Merrill web site.
Transferring together with Butler are Nabil Shurafa, who began within the trade in 2017 at hybrid RIA broker-dealer Hantz Monetary Companies and joined Merrill in 2020, and Tara Huntzicker, a wealth strategist who began at Merrill in 2009, in keeping with BrokerCheck information. Butler, who didn’t reply to a request for remark for this story, and Shurafa registered at a UBS workplace in Detroit whereas Huntzicker is working from a department in its Birmingham suburb, in keeping with BrokerCheck.
Staying behind on Merrill’s Grosse Pointe workplace workforce are two advisors and two shopper associates, together with James Ricca, a 20-year veteran, who additionally had been at Morgan Stanley and moved similtaneously Butler. The 2 established a workforce, which was known as the Butler Ricca Group, in keeping with Merrill’s web site. Ricca, reached by telephone on Thursday, declined to touch upon Butler’s departure.
A Merrill spokesperson additionally declined to touch upon the transfer.
The trail from Merrill to UBS has been effectively trod by brokers just lately, after the house of the thundering herd withdrew from recruiting veteran brokers in 2017 and has avoided leaping again into the fray regardless of a gradual outflow of brokers that has continued all through the pandemic.
UBS this month hauled in from Merrill a Portland, Maine workforce with $400 million in shopper belongings and $1.9 in annual manufacturing. In July, it scooped up a New York Metropolis-based Merrill workforce with $1.45 billion in shopper belongings and $11.2 million in annual manufacturing. And in March, a Backyard Metropolis, Lengthy Island Merrill advisor producing $7.1 million in annual income jumped to UBS.
UBS had 6,274 brokers, together with a number of hundred in Latin America and Canada, on the finish of June, down a internet 31 over the second quarter, in keeping with its Swiss guardian’s most up-to-date earnings report. Merrill not breaks out its headcount of conventional brokers as a part of its guardian Financial institution of America’s earnings.