LPL, RBC pick up advisors with $1B+ in assets

LPL, RBC add $1B+ teams from industry rivals: Advisor Moves

September 26, 2025 3:23 PM

Tennant Financial, a 10-member team that formerly managed $1.3 billion at Northwestern Mutual, has joined LPL in Ballston Lake, New York.

Normally, some of the biggest wealth news of the week would have been about LPL Financial's and RBC Wealth Management's recruitment of large advisory teams from Northwestern Mutual, UBS and JPMorgan.

But those wins were overshadowed this week by a lawsuit Merrill filed after one of its star teams — a group managing roughly $129 billion in Atlanta — left to start an RIA with Dynasty Financial Partners.

Still, the movement of teams with $1 billion or more in AUM remains noteworthy. Keep reading for details about those deals and other recruiting and acquisition moves announced this week.

LPL pulls $1.3B team from Northwestern Mutual

LPL Financial is extending its reach further into upstate New York with the recruitment of a prominent team from Northwestern Mutual.

Tennant Financial, a 10-member team led by Steven Tennant, Jeremy Berry and Ryan Wade, has joined LPL in Ballston Lake, New York, near Saratoga Springs. They previously had managed $1.3 billion at Northwestern Mutual.

The three have worked together since 2000 and specialize in serving high net worth clients, executives, business owners and medical professionals. Tennant had been affiliated with Northwestern Mutual since 1996, Berry since 1998 and Wade since 2005.

The team is joining LPL's channel for registered investment advisors, which typically generate most of their revenue from fees charged as a percentage of the assets they have under management. LPL, the largest U.S. independent broker-dealer, has nearly 30,000 advisors but doesn't break out its number for its RIA channel.

A six-member team, led by the advisors Jonathan Modiano, Adam Jones and Mark Steinberg and formerly managing $1.1 billion at UBS, has joined RBC Wealth Management near Detroit.

Courtesy of RBC Wealth Management

RBC pulls $1B team from UBS, $1B advisor from JPMorgan

RBC's U.S. wealth division had a big recruiting week with prominent teams pulled from UBS and JPMorgan.

On Thursday, RBC Wealth Management's U.S. division announced it had recruited a six-person team that had formerly managed $1.1 billion for UBS in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. That came two days after RBC said it had pulled an advisor who had managed $1 billion for JPMorgan in New York.

The team from UBS is composed of the private wealth advisors Jonathan Modiano, Adam Jones; financial advisor Mark Steinberg; senior business associates Tricia Fitzsimmons and Kristen Charlton; and senior investment associate Daniel Welsh. Modiano started at UBS in 2003, Jones in 2011 and Steinberg was at Merrill for four years before moving to UBS in 2005.

As for the move in New York, Kevin Carey had been the leader of a practice with nearly $1 billion in AUM at J.P. Morgan Wealth Management. He started his career in 2008 at Deutsche Bank and moved to First Republic in 2012. First Republic was bought out of government receivership by JPMorgan in 2023.

RBC has been one of the most aggressive recruiters among wealth management firms in the past year. Its recent successes include a former First Republic team managing $5 billion, also pulled from JPMorgan.

It has also been among the many wealth managers that have benefited from an outflow of UBS advisors following changes to that firm's broker pay policies this year. In July, for instance, it announced it had recruited a team formerly managing $1.7 billion for UBS in Westchester, New York.

UBS is trying to stem the departures with a series of modifications to its pay policies announced last week. UBS ended its second quarter with 5,773 advisors in its Americas unit, which includes the U.S., Canada and Latin America. That was 229 fewer advisors than in the second quarter of last year. RBC had 6,218 advisors in all of its wealth businesses in its most recently completed quarter, which it calls its third quarter.

Osaic adds advisor duo, solo advisor with nearly $800M in total AUM

Osaic has increased its total assets under management by roughly $780 million with a solo advisor recruited from Valic Financial Advisors and a pair of women advisors who have come together to start their own firm.

Bart Butler and his team, which will now operate under the name Rightside Financial, had formerly managed roughly $400 million at Valic in Columbus, Ohio. They're joining Osaic's office of supervisory jurisdiction called Signature Equity Partners. OSJs are large practices inside broker-dealers that handle various regulatory tasks in-house rather than outsourcing them to a central office. Butler started his career in 1999 and joined Valic in 2001, according to BrokerCheck.

Mandy Dollar and Jennifer Wallis have come together to found ArrowPoint Wealth Advisors, a firm managing $379 million out of offices in Oklahoma City and Edmond, Oklahoma. Dollar, CEO of ArrowPoint, was most recently a trust officer and wealth relationship manager at the regional bank MidFirst Bank. She started at Merrill in 2015, moved to Morgan Stanley in 2017 and then started a brokerage affiliation with Cetera in 2019, according to BrokerCheck. She specializes in working with professional athletes and entertainers.

Wallis, chief growth officer at ArrowPoint, became registered as an advisor with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2015, having an affiliation with Retirement Investment Advisors.

With nearly $4.9 billion in revenue in 2024, Osaic came in at the No. 3 spot this year in Financial Planning's annual "IBD Elite" ranking of the largest independent broker-dealers. Osaic, formerly Advisor Group, works with roughly 11,000 advisors and financial professionals.

Raymond James pulls $350M team from Commonwealth

Raymond James is continuing its streak of recruiting advisors from Commonwealth Financial Network amid that firm's absorption by LPL Financial.

A team of four advisors has joined Raymond James Financial Services, the firm's channel for independent advisors, to form Compass Investment Management. The group, led by Gary Bragg, Colby Dionne, Daniel Espenscheid and Michael Nerney, had previously managed $350 million at Commonwealth.

Bragg started at Commonwealth in 1990. Nerney became registered with Commonwealth in 2022, and Espenscheid and Dionne both joined the firm in 2024.

Raymond James has been the most successful recruiter of advisors from Commonwealth ever since that firm announced in March that it would be bought by LPL Financial in a deal valued at $2.7 billion. Hardly a week has gone by since that purchase closed in August that Raymond James has not announced pulling over another team from Commonwealth.

LPL Financial, which has more than 29,000 advisors, has set a goal of retaining at least 90% of 2,900 advisors and $285 billion in AUM that Commonwealth had when the purchase plans were announced. When Raymond James last reported its headcount, it had 8,787 advisors.

Elevation Point takes stake in $1.4B multifamily office

Elevation Point, a firm that buys minority shares in RIAs and then provides them with various types of support, has taken an ownership stake in a multifamily office firm started by former UBS advisors.

Loxahatchee Capital, based in Tequesta, Florida, was recently founded in part with a capital infusion from Elevation Point. Loxahatchee was started by members of 440 Group at UBS, which had worked mainly with high net worth clients and families.

The firm is led by Andrew Plum, managing partner and head of its investment committee, and Thomas Cullen, partner and senior portfolio manager. Loxahatchee is seeking to work mainly with clients and institutions with $10 million or more assets. It has chosen BNY Pershing as its primary custodian, charged with safeguarding client assets and providing various types of technological support.

Elevation Point was founded in 2024 and receives support from the private equity firm Emigrant Partners. It buys stakes of at least 20% in RIAs and provides them with technology, investment help and back-office support in return. The firms it has invested in have roughly $9.6 billion in assets under supervision in total.

MAI Capital Management picks up $612M RIA

The RIA aggregator MAI Capital Management is pushing further into Ohio with its purchase of an advisory firm with $612 million under management.

J.W. Coons Advisors, an RIA in Columbus, Ohio, with an additional office in Naples, Florida, is the latest firm to join MAI, which is majority owned by the private equity-backed firm Galways Holdings. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

J.W. Coons Advisors was founded in 2003 by James W. Coons. The firm specializes in providing customized portfolios, estate and philanthropic planning and comprehensive financial planning services.

It will now take on the MAI brand. Coons and other executives, including principals Robert Hoffman and Keith Blankemeyer, will remain in place along with other employees.

The deal comes amid a series of prominent acquisitions by MAI. Last week, it announced it had bought Summit Financial Advisors, a firm in San Mateo, California, with $570 million under management.

That came after MAI said last month that it was planning to buy the Los Angeles-based firm Evoke Advisors in a deal that will roughly double its asset tally to $60 billion. MAI Capital Management was founded in Cleveland in 1973 and now manages nearly $32 billion in client assets.

Carson Group buys $300M RIA

The RIA-aggregator Carson Group is bolstering its presence in the Chicago area with the purchase of an advisory team managing $300 million in client assets.

GCD Advisors, based in Palatine, Illinois, has joined Carson's Great Lakes office, overseen by managing partner Mark McCallum. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

GCD is led by the senior wealth advisors Greg Diamond and Neil Cohen. Over the past two decades, they built their business by working with mid to high net worth clients throughout Chicagoland and the country. They began their careers as certified public accounts and bring tax expertise to their financial planning.

Carson Group is one of many firms in the wealth management industry that's tapping private equity capital to buy RIAs. It sold a minority stake in itself in 2021 to the private equity powerhouse Bain Capital in a deal giving it an implied value of $1 billion.

Last week, Carson announced its purchase of the Wells Trecaso Financial Group, a firm managing $570 million in Akron, Ohio. Carson now manages more than $48 billion in client assets and has more than 150 advisory offices in its network.