LPL Picks up UBS’ Robo Chief, Wells Teams Jump to Stifel
LPL Financial on Monday said it hired a UBS Financial Services executive who catered to the wirehouse’s low-tier customers to head recruiting while Stifel Financial said it scored brokers from Merrill Lynch and Wells Fargo in California.
Richard Steinmeier, chief digital officer for UBS Financial Services, will join LPL in mid-August as “head of business development,” the large independent broker-dealer said. He will replace Bill Morrissey, who is retiring to “spend more time with his young family,” according to an LPL release.
The change follows a wave of departures by LPL recruiters. The firm added some 1,900 brokers in the past six months through a deal with National Planning Holdings but the number missed its most optimistic expectations as dozens of NPH brokers went to rivals. Morrissey, who had been with LPL since 2004, had been attempting to ramp up recruiting efforts through sweetened deals, but LPL lost a net 84 brokers excluding the NPH recruits in this year’s first quarter.
Steinmeier, who worked at Merrill Lynch and consulting firm McKinsey & Co. before joining UBS in 2012, did not return a message sent to him via LinkedIn. At UBS, he ran the “wealth advice” call center for so-called emerging affluent investors, those who generally keep less than $250,000 with the firm.
Steinmeier, who LPL said will move to its San Diego headquarters from UBS Wealth Management headquarters in New Jersey, was also UBS’s point man on its Advice Advantage robo platform for small investors.
In a Q&A on LPL’s website, Steinmeier said his technology experience can help him articulate clients’ growing digital demands to advisors and help increase their productivity.
St. Louis-based Stifel said it hired the father-daughter Merrill Lynch team of Howard and Ashlee Ashlock in Newport Beach, Calif., on Friday. The advisors were overseeing $160 million in client assets, a Stifel spokesman confirmed.
Howard Ashlock, a career wirehouse broker, initiated his career at Merrill in 1994, left in 1998 for stints at Salomon Smith Barney and UBS Financial Services and returned to the Thundering Herd in 2010, according to his BrokerCheck history. His daughter began her brokerage career in March 2016 on her father’s team at Merrill. The Ashlocks generated around $1.2 million in production, according to a source familiar with their business.
Reached at their new Stifel office, Ashlee declined to comment on the reason for move and her father did not respond to a request for comment.
One day before the Ashlocks’ arrival at Stifel last week, the firm hired brokers David Beach and Larry Maddox in Modesto, Calif. The solo practicitoners had been with Wells Fargo Advisors in that city.
Beach, a 23-year brokerage industry veteran who spent all but four months of his career at Wells and its A.G. Edwards predecessor, had been managing $168 million in assets, Stifel said in a news release. Maddox, whose entire 21-year career was with Wells and A.G. Edwards, was overseeing $48 million in customer assets.
Stifel opened its Modesto office two months ago, and in May hired another Wells broker, Asma Mahmood, who had been overseeing $66 million in assets.
They report to branch manager Dane Anderson, a 20-year emigrant from Wells and A.G. Edwards, who joined Stifel in April.
