Ann Marsh

If Congress allows Bush-era tax cuts to expire next year, as many expect, planners everywhere must be aware of the “fiscal cliff” their clients will confront.

Kanaly Trust, a Houston wealth manager with approximately $2 billion in assets under management, announced it will be acquired by Lovell Minnick Partners, a private equity firm that provides buyout and growth capital to companies in the financial services industry.

Dallas-based 1st Global has launched a new offering intended to help CPA firms develop and grow wealth management services as a core part of their practices.

Michael James, a former wealth strategist in Goldman Sachs' mid-Atlantic region, has joined the Philadelphia office of Glenmede, an independent investment and wealth management firm, as director of family wealth advisory.

Based on conversations with more than 20,000 professionals, a new white paper proposes five natural starting places where planners can look for members of the 80 million-person-strong Generation Y, which will account for the next generation of financial planning clients.

In a new strategic direction, Washington Wealth Management, a two-year old firm that has been growing on a tear by luring advisors from wirehouses, has joined LPL, bringing $750 million in assets under management to the country's largest independent broker-dealer.

Some planners, especially those with established practices, may not think it's worth it to cultivate Generation Y clients because they are young. But, a new white paper suggests, that the ramp-up years may be the perfect time to build a new Gen Y clientele.

Planners born before 1946 may be members of the so-called silent generation. They may stand three generations older than the rising Geneneration Y, but they are the demographic that Gen Y trusts the most, according to a new white paper,

Members of Generation Y are fundamentally less trusting, more inclined to do their own research and more insistent on mobile technologies for everything - including their financial planning and investing. This is according to a new white paper that urges planners to get to know Gen Y better by comparing it to the two generations that preceded it: Generation X and the Baby Boomers.

Finding the right financial planner can be a confusing process. To simplify the search, the SEC has released a new bulletin that contains tips for finding one. It also contains a list of questions consumers should ask planners - and that all planners should be prepared to answer.

Last month fewer broker-dealers closed their doors and fewer new ones opened them - a drop in overall activity that appears to be the product of three factors, according to David Alsup, director of business development for The Compliance Department, a consulting firm that regularly tallies these numbers.

At 80 million strong, Generation Y represents a bigger opportunity than their Boomer parents for planners. But members of this generation neither think nor behave like their elders, according to a new white paper.

Washington Wealth Management added Domari Wealth Management, a breakaway team from Wells Fargo with $135 million in AUM and $1.4 million in revenue, to its newly formed Woodland Hills, Calif., office.

"Confidentiality is critical," says Mary Ann Buchanan, a 25-year industry veteran and founder of Purcellville, VA-based RIA Match. "[Advisors] need to be able to look around anonymously. They need to have the ability to stick their toe in the water and see who is out there. Names and addresses [collected from users] will never, ever be sold."

By the end of last year, assets under management in global alternative investments hit $6.5 trillion, having grown seven times faster than traditional asset classes over the previous five years. This is according to a new McKinsey & Company study that predicts this growth represents only the beginning of a new wave of assets moving into alternatives.

Seeking confidential access to brokers looking to make a transition, Securities America has signed a new agreement with online company Join A Firm that will cover costs for its branches to maintain profiles on the recruit-matching site.

The SEC has obtained a $1.1 million settlement from Portland, Ore., based planner Christopher Keil Hicks and two of his companies on charges they failed to disclose a revenue-sharing agreement and other conflicts with his clients.

Independent planning firm RMR Wealth Builders of Teaneck, N.J., has left its long-time independent broker-dealer, the Cetera company, for Innovation Equity Partners Financial in Tampa, Fla.

In an effort to leverage its increasing scale while maintaining the independence of each of its four B-Ds, Cetera Financial Group is rebranding each of those companies with new names that all begin with Cetera.

"We have many advisor who are choosing to build their practices around women," says Joan Khoury, LPL's chief marketing officer. "When they do this, we are empowering them to have all this turnkey info for their women investors."