UBS Brokers with $15-Mln Production Leave for Rockefeller, RBC and RayJay
UBS Wealth Management USA this week lost three multi-million dollar teams, including a trio who left on Friday, who were generating a combined $15 million in production.
The team, which will move into a new Houston office when it opens later this summer, is Rockefeller’s fifth in Texas and its second in Houston following its hiring last month of $4.5 million broker David Frankfort from Raymond James Financial’s Alex. Brown unit.
Rockefeller, whose Texas operations are overseen by former Merrill complex manager Michael Armondo, last week hired a six-million-dollar Merrill team in Dallas. Scruggs, a managing director at UBS, began his career at Merrill in 2000, shifted to UBS in 2005 and worked from 2010 to 2014 at Deutsche Bank Securities before returning to UBS, according to his BrokerCheck.
Under the leadership of former Morgan Stanley wealth president Greg Fleming, New York-based Rockefeller has hired 32 teams since it was recapitalized in 2017 under private equity firm Viking Global Management.
On Wednesday, a family practice managing $341 million left UBS in Clayton, Missouri to join Raymond James Financial’s independent broker channel.
Led by Mike Brown, a 30-year industry veteran who ranked #14 on Forbes’ 2020 Best-In-Missouri Wealth Advisors list, the team produced $3.1 million in annual revenue, according to two sources.
In addition to Brown, who was a managing director at UBS, the group includes his wife, Tammy, and son, Adam, who are each wealth strategy associates. Mike and Tammy Brown had been with UBS since 2000.
Brown began his brokerage career in 1990 as an independent contractor with Royal Alliance Associates, shifted to Prudential Securities in 1994 and joined UBS in 2000, according to his BrokerCheck record. He worked as a personal finance and investing journalist in St. Louis prior to his brokerage career, according to his UBS biography.
The advisor did not return a call for comment on his motivation for returning to independence after two decades with UBS.
Adam Brown had been with the wirehouse for his entire 12-year brokerage career. Tammy worked for three years at Prudential Securities before shifting to UBS in 2000.
The Browns have no customer complaints or other “disclosure” events on their records.
Separately, Mark Bilski, a 35-year industry veteran who was managing over $650 million in client assets at UBS in New York City, joined RBC Wealth Management U.S. on Thursday with four client associates, according to the Royal Bank of Canada unit.
“Culturally, it’s a great fit for me and my practice,” said Bilski in a prepared statement.
The adviser, who joined UBS in 2012 from Credit Suisse, generated $7.2 million of fees and commissions in the past 12 months, according to a source familiar with his book of business.
Bilski, who began his career in 1984 at Loeb Partners, did not return a request for comment. Theodore Papadopoulos, a 27-year brokerage veteran who was Bilski’s partner at UBS, remains with the wirehouse, according to their team website. Papadopoulos did not return a request for comment.
Bilski worked for 12 years at Advest, where he managed a multi-strategy hedge fund and served on the Connecticut-based firm’s board until November 2005, when it was sold to Merrill Lynch, according to BrokerCheck and his UBS biography.
The exits follow those of three other UBS teams in the past two weeks who were managing more than $1.8 billion in client assets and producing almost $10 million in annual revenue.
The Swiss bank-owned wealth management firm, the smallest of four wirehouses, recently saw its U.S. broker count fall to just below 6,000 from about 8,700 a decade ago, according to UBS insiders.
A UBS spokesman declined to comment.
Good for all involved. With quotas coming to a firm near you , the waste of money will be epic
merit based quotas dont exist.
Congratulations Shay! Good luck.
One can either point to Rockefeller’s success in attracting large teams right now, or UBS’s pretty dismal attempts to hold on to the ones that they have (had), but UBS senior management has got to be very concerned. This is close to becoming an exodus and despite the vitriol that is predictably thrown by jealous compatriots at nearly every wirehouse team that moves for a check or to escape onerous oversight and control, at some point people are going to wonder if they’ll be the last ones left to turn out the lights.
It’s all a sham unless you leave the wires. Trading checks and prisoners of the lack of creativity and one size fits all for at best half of your revenues.
Same old story at UBS. The Swiss bought PW at the top of the market and then never invested in PW over the next 10 years. The only advisors who will be left there by the end of this year, have no control over their clients or signed the ridiculous agreements to acquire retiring advisor’s books.
Correct, most of the senior brokers just collected dismal accounts of brokers who long left. It’s a 9-5 job checking mutual fund trailers.
Instead of reducing payouts etc, firms should spend their money rewarding loyalty not paying out tons of doe to advisors who are only going to hop again when they can.
Hi Sick, Too sick and old and tired to leave? Oh, maybe you inherited all of you $200,000 accounts. Good luck.