Rockefeller Lures Two Florida Teams with $9.8 Mln Revenue
Rockefeller has expanded its brokerage business in the Sunshine State and on Friday hired two teams who had been generating a combined $9.8 million in annual revenue at Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch in Boca Raton.
In the other move in the same city, Rockefeller hired the DBT group, which includes 40-year career Merrill lifer John Marshall Duane III, Christopher M. Bell and Thomas C. Tabor as well as two client associates. The group had been generating around $3.3 million in fees and commissions from $600 million in client assets, according to the source.
Friday’s round of hiring in Boca came a day after Rockefeller hired a Merrill team in Chicago that is led by Richard Bergman and that had $2.2 million in annual revenue. They bring to 44 the number of teams that the New York firm has hired since its recapitalization in 2018 under Viking Global Investors. Company executives have said it aims to grow to around 200 advisor teams by 2025.
“We’re excited to welcome our new teams aboard and to continue building off the robust pace of business growth set in 2020,” Chris Randazzo, president of Private Wealth Management for Rockefeller Capital Management, said in a prepared statement.
Rockefeller, which added 26 teams last year, in December added its second team in Boca Raton, a $3 million practice led by Samantha Zapoleon.
Neither of the teams on Friday could immediately be reached for comment on their shift.
Nelson Faro started his brokerage career at Prudential Securities in 1984, moved to UBS Wealth Management USA in 1994, and joined Morgan Stanley in 2009, according to his BrokerCheck record. Forrest began his career at UBS in 2000, and Kyle started at UBS in 2007. Baum started at Morgan Stanley in 2011.
Bell started at Merrill in 2007, and spent four months in 2008 at Morgan Keegan before returning to Merrill the same year, according to BrokerCheck. Tabor started at Merrill in 2015.
Congratulations on your invitation to Rockefeller. The culture of the firm continues to build with every talented person that joins. We are building something very special together.
I look back on all of the silly things we used to worry about at Merrill and the stress it caused within our team. Structuring our team roles so we wouldn’t be penalized by growth grid, how to bring in a new $250k client every two weeks so we wouldn’t be penalized on grid, and the “client experience” bank cross selling incentives. For what? It all seems so pointless now.
I feel so free to not think about any of that. Our team is thriving as a cohesive unit and delivering the best client experience we ever have. We are extremely happy with the change.
The part I didn’t understand going into this was how differently large clients look at Rockefeller than Merrill. One of our largest clients said he was glad to see us move out of “Retail” and focus on people like his friends. The size of the new introductions we have received and the consolidation of outside assets from long term clients is like nothing we have ever seen.
If you anyone reading this is lucky enough to get an invitation to Rockefeller, take it.
Does Rockefeller have a transition package for top, top tier advisors? If so, how does it generally work?
Golden ticket end feed – nice job recruiters. Look at some of the names hired and ask around what people think of them. Really HNW. Ha! No clue who they are really buying. They’ll tell you otherwise for sure.
You are right—Merrill is much more catered to the HNW. HNW just love credit cards, checking accounts and car loans. They love that their fiduciary advisors are comped on a growth grid and they really love that the firm bans contact with their advisor until the pandemic is over. Flopping back and forth on the DOL and adding Edge and bankers to each branch is just an added plus!!
@Wrong again – Best comment ever!
Happy to share with you their deal if interested. Feel free to text me at 914.269.8232.
There is a high likelihood that Rockefeller gets sold within the next 24 months, as private equity firms predictably expect a high (and quick) return on their capital. Rockefeller is up to its nose in PE money from Viking, and once it pays out the requisite oversized transition bonuses to lure enough advisors to constitute critical mass, the game will change in a big way and so will the situation for those advisors.