Morgan Stanley Team Jumps to Wells Fargo FiNet
Thomas Fautrel and Paul H. Carlson, whose discontent with wirehouse strictures extended to disgruntlement over what they could call their team, have jumped from Morgan Stanley to Wells Fargo Advisors’ independent channel with three junior brokers in tow.
The team, which made the leap last Thursday, produced more than $2 million of revenue in the past 12 months and managed about $225 million of customer assets, Fautrel said in an interview this week.
He and Carlson wanted more flexibility and control, including the ability to call their practice Seventy2 Capital Wealth Management, a nod that jointly acknowledges the finance “rule” for estimating an investment’s doubling time and the team’s location on the 7200 block of Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda, Md. Morgan Stanley’s compliance department had prohibited them from using the word “capital,” forcing them to incongruously dub their practice Seventy2 “Capitol” and use the logo of the U.S. Capitol building on marketing materials, Fautrel said.
The partners of Seventy2 Capital Wealth Management, as they now call the business, opted for FiNet over competitor independent firms because of Wells Fargo’s broad research platform and financial planning software, Fautrel said. He also said that the Wells Fargo name, this summer’s bogus account scandal nothwithstanding, was recognizable to customers they are trying to lure over from Morgan Stanley.
“Our clients had always been at a big firm,” said Fautrel, who has been partners with Carlson since they met at Merrill Lynch in 2009, “Having that big-firm backing as well as a little bit of independence was the perfect match.”
Asked if their history of moves—they left Merrill for Morgan Stanley in 2011—was influenced by bonuses, Fautrel said: “If we were doing it for the dollar, we’d be at UBS.”
Fautrel began his career in 2004 at A.G. Edwards & Sons and moved to Merrill Lynch in 2007.
Carlson joined the brokerage industry with Lehman Brothers 1993, and also worked at American Express Financial Advisors (now Ameriprise) before joining Merrill in 2004.
