Barclays Wealth has hired Richard Comeau to join its New York office. Comeau, who has 20 years of industry experience, was most recently at Goldman Sachs.

Comeau spent four years at Goldman where he advised wealthy investors whose trading activity is similar to that of small institutions, according to a press release from Barclays.

Prior to that he spent two and a half years at Jefferies & Company.

Barclays has publicly stated that it’s seeking to boost its advisor force after entering the market in September 2008 when it bought Lehman’s advisor unit following the collapse of the parent company. Two hundred and fifty former Lehman advisors joined Barclays.

At a recruiters roundtable hosted by On Wall Street last week, industry headhunters expressed mixed feelings about Barclays’ prospects for growth. “Barclays is a wonderful company but its brand is not familiar here,” California-based recruiter Bill Willis said. “They might buy another firm. They don’t want to be here with only 250 brokers,” he added. 

Mickey Wasserman, another California-based recruiter, said the firm is “too picky” about who it hires. “They don’t have the cache of a brand name to make it big here. They don’t understand how to do business in the U.S.,” he said.

All of the recruiters’ opinions on the current state of the industry will be featured in the January 2010 issue of On Wall Street magazine.