Charles Paikert

Financial advisors are three times as likely to respond to a sales pitch from an asset manager, broker-dealer, custodian or insurance company when the approach is made in person, according to a new study.

The 2013 RIA Roadshow will kick off a six-city tour of the Midwest on Tuesday September 24 in Troy, Michigan.

The expansion-focused $6 billion wealth manager has added Santa Barbara-based Pacific Pointe to its roster, making it the fifth firm in Beacon Pointe’s growing stable, and the fourth in California.

Senior executives with leadership experience and strong sales skills in high demand as current advisors look to retire.

Larry Roth, former president and chief executive officer of Advisor Group, one of the country’s largest networks of independent broker-dealers, is joining Realty Capital Securities, a major broker-dealer and wholesaler of real estate investment trusts, as chief executive officer.

Now that profits are at record highs, financial advisors' next priority should be better people management, according to the 2013 FA Insight Study of Advisory Firms: People and Pay. Cost control, solid productivity and soaring client profitability helped the typical advisory firm reach a profit margin in excess of 20% in 2012, the highest margin in the survey's five-year history.

Rex Staples, the director of investigations for the beleaguered CFP Board of Standards, is stepping down.

Beginning next month, a number of tech firms that are also RIAs are poised to enter the red-hot online advisory space, offering consumers not only financial guidance but specific buy/sell/hold recommendations for mutual funds and ETFs, based on algorithms and aggregation of clients’ accounts.

The advisory industry is already locked in fierce competition to recruit new advisors. Now TD Ameritrade Institutional is ratcheting up its efforts to attract talent.

Edward Gjertsen II, vice president of Mack Investment Securities in Glenview, Ill,. has been named FPA president-elect by the organizations’ board of directors. Gjertsen’s one-year term as president-elect begins on January 1, 2014.

AMG Wealth Partners has taken a minority stake in Tarrytown, N.Y.-based Clarfeld Financial Advisors, a $4 billion firm with a London office that specializes in serving wealthy U. S. citizens living abroad. The investment is the second since the division was formed two years ago as a subsidiary of AMG, which has more than $470 billion in assets.

While the nation's largest independent broker-dealer says it has no “imminent” plans to own a bank, it now can if it wants to -- thanks to the announcement of a stock distribution by two of the firm’s original private-equity investors.

Raymond James is ramping up its pitch to attract independent advisors by opening up access to alternative investments.

The latest Focus catch is a big one: Southfield, Mich.-based Telemus Capital Partners, which provides investment management, financial planning, retirement and estate planning, life insurance and tax consulting to nearly 600 clients across the country. The firm has more than $2.2 billion in client assets.

Membership in these organizations is by invitation only -- but the top advisor execs who belong say the select clubs offer a big payoff. Here's how they work.

Investing directly in private companies is becoming increasingly popular with wealthy families.

LPL Financial Holdings reported the strongest quarter in the company’s nearly three years as a public company, with net revenues topping $1 billion for the first time. LPL’s board of directors also announced the company’s quarterly dividend would be raised 40% to 19 cents per share.

Questions about the future of online advice have intensified since Bloomberg LP, the multibillion-dollar data, information and media giant, said last week that it was shutting down its own online wealth management offering, BloombergBlack.

A 33-year financial services industry veteran from Southern California has been elected to serve as 2014 Chair-elect of the CFP Board of Standards’ Board of Directors.

“We see an opportunity to have a national RIA multifamily office brand with the Forbes name,” Scott Gregorchuk, chief executive of Forbes Family Trust tells Financial Planning. “We are surgically targeting the right advisors and investment advisory firms to join our effort.”