Opco Broker in L.A. Producing $4 Mln Goes Independent

One of Oppenheimer & Co.’s biggest-producing brokers has left the Los Angeles office of the New York-based firm to set up an independent practice affiliated with Cetera Financial’s Summit Brokerage Services.

Lawrence (Larry) Goldstein, his daughter, Brooke, and three client associates left on Friday, according to people at both firms. He generated about $4 million in the past 12 months from clients with about $400 million of assets at Oppenheimer, ranking him among Opco’s top 10 producers, according to a person familiar with the team’s practice.

Goldstein, who first registered as an advisor in 1999 with PaineWebber and has been with Opco and a predecessor firm since 2001, did not return requests for comment. His daughter first registered as a broker in 2014, with Oppenheimer.

Kevin Friedman, manager of Oppenehiemer’s Wilshire Boulevard branch in Los Angeles, did not respond to a request for comment. Both Oppenheimer and Cetera are in the Protocol for Broker Recruiting, which permits advisors moving among signatory firms to take limited customer-contact information with them.

“He’s been talking about doing this for a while,” said Gary Chiate, a 41-year Oppenheimer veteran who joined Goldstein’s team about a few years ago as part of a retirement-transition agreement and remains at Opco. “He had the intent and the desire.”

Goldstein specializes in fixed-income hedge-fund investments and has a large number of fee-paying clients from the Hollywood and Nashville communities, said the person familiar with his practice. He christened the new firm Brentwood Financial Advisors, alluding to affluent communities in both the California and Tennessee locations.

Goldstein received a strong deal from Cetera that includes a payout in excess of 90% of his revenue, but was mostly convinced that Boca Raton, Fla.-based Summit—one of Cetera’s smallest units with fewer than 600 brokers—could continue to give him product access and execution expertise through its bond desk, the person said.

Oppenheimer employed 1,062 brokers at 94 U.S. branches as of the end of the first quarter, down by 20 advisors from 12 months earlier, according to the firm’s regulatory filings.

Prior to becoming a broker, Goldsein was a senior “behavioral healthcare” executive and pioneer in “group practice integrative medical” services at a company that went public, according to his former Oppenheimer website biography.

His BrokerCheck history has nine disclosures, including a $6,600 fine and 10-day suspension from Finra in 2011 for allegedly unsuitable recommendations in unrated or low-rated preferred securities after a long period in conservative investments. He commented on the site the client unexpectedly withdrew money prompting recommendations of investments with higher interest rates.

Two of the seven customer complaints on his record were withdrawn or denied, and five were settled prior to 2008 with settlements of $40,000 and lower.