RBC Nets 4 from Morgan Stanley

Four legacy Smith Barney advisors with a combined $500 million in assets and $3.2 million in production have joined RBC Wealth Management.

Industry veterans Donald Mills, Steve Lahre, Jeff Fink and Brian Neault will operate out of the firm’s La Jolla, Calif., office and are slated to move into a new San Diego office that is in the works for next year.

"It's a fantastic market," Larry Andrews, branch manger of the La Jolla office said in a phone interview. "Great demographics, great market, and our story is second to none."

Starting his advising career in 1969, Mills has over four decades of experience according to filings with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and has previously been at Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Citigroup, which sold its ownership in Smith Barney to Morgan Stanley earlier this year.

Lahre has over three decades of experience and also went through Lehman Brothers and Citigroup, according to FINRA.

Starting his career at Citigroup in San Diego in 1982, Fink comes to RBC with three decades of experience.

The most recent of the four to enter the industry, Neault joined Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in San Diego in 2008.

RBC has added a number of wirehouse advisors so far this year including a former Merrill Lynch advisor in Tuscon, Ariz., and a former branch director form Merrill Lynch in Miami.

According to Andrews, the move from a wirehouse firm to a large regional firm such as RBC, which has over 2,000 advisors, is no longer as startling as it was when he switched from Merrill Lynch seven years ago. 

"Seven years ago, it was a much larger leap of faith," he said. "It’s not the leap of fath now that it has been."

The team will also report to complex manager Ken Sullivan.

 

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