Raymond James, Wells Fargo top list of weekly Advisor Moves

Raymond James, Wells Fargo, Sanctuary score $1B+ deals: Advisor Moves

August 15, 2025 1:01 PM

Wells Fargo, Raymond James and Sanctuary were all big winners with recruiting deals this week.

Also, SageView Advisory Group and Corient inked some big M&A transactions, and Osaic added a large credit union to its institutions division. Read about it all below.

Raymond James draws a $1.8B team from M Financial Group

Raymond James has secured a large advisory team with offices in New Jersey and Florida.

Greenberg & Rapp, a 16-member firm specializing in financial planning for ultrahigh net worth families, is joining Raymond James Financial Services, the firm's channel for independent advisors. The team had previously managed roughly $1.8 billion in client assets at the insurance and financial services firm M Financial Group.

Greenberg & Rapp has offices in Morristown, New Jersey, and West Palm Beach, Florida, and is led by founders and principals Thomas Rapp and Ronald Greenberg. Greenberg has 37 years of industry experience. He started his career in 1988 at Prudential and joined M Financial in 2004 after stints at several firms. Rapp started at Prudential in 1988 and also joined M Financial in 2004.

The advisors joining them are J.P. Bartolomeo, T. Keith Brown, Bill Conroy, Jordan Crowley, Jonathan Crozier, Jake Greenberg, Jack Grondin, Cole Koeniger, Ryan Miscik, Dennis Mojares, Ryan Pergola, Michael Pfenninger, Brian Rapp and Dante Zicarelli.

Wells Fargo draws $1.7B team from Morgan Stanley

Wells Fargo has turned to its wirehouse rival Morgan Stanley to recruit a prominent private wealth management team in Louisiana.

The Feld Weinstein Group is now part of Wells Fargo Advisors in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where it had previously managed $1.7 billion for Morgan Stanley. The team is led by the private wealth advisors David Weinstein, Ira Feld, Sergio Collette and Brandon Chagnard.

The team moved to Morgan Stanley from Merrill in 2016. Weinstein started his career at Morgan Keegan in 1994 and moved to Merrill in 1997, according to BrokerCheck. Feld started at CS First Boston in 1993 and moved to Merrill in 1995. Colette started at Merrill in 2007 and Chagnard started there in 2012.

Separately joining Wells Fargo in Baton Rouge is Nicole Fawley, a former Morgan Stanley advisor who had previously managed $100 million. Fawley started her career in 2001 and joined Merrill in 2009. She also moved to Morgan Stanley in 2016.

Sanctuary pulls $1.2B team from UBS

The RIA aggregator Sanctuary Wealth has added another large former UBS team to its group of partner firms.

Dial Square Private Wealth, which had managed $1.2 billion in assets at UBS, is joining Sanctuary in Orange County California. The practice was founded by Jim Chiate and Tony Guinane, who began working together at Merrill in 2003 and moved to UBS in 2013. At UBS, they had been part of a Los Angeles group called Wise River Advisors.

Joining them at Dial Square are vice president and operations manager Owen Galasso and vice president and wealth associate Nazgol Nekoomaram. The firm will use Charles Schwab and Goldman Sachs as custodians for client assets.

"After building a remarkable practice in wirehouses, Jim and Tony, like many highly successful wealth managers limited by the employee model, decided to start their own firm, unlocking the valuable asset they have worked so hard to build while removing restrictions on what they can offer to their clients," Vince Fertitta, president of wealth management at Sanctuary Wealth, said in a statement.

Sanctuary Wealth's network includes more than 125 firms in 32 states. It now has $55 billion in assets either under management or moving over from other firms and receives financial backing from the asset manager Azimut and private credit manager Kennedy Lewis Investment Management.

Dial Square isn't the only team to move to Sanctuary from UBS in recent months. In May, Sanctuary announced it had picked up an advisory group — 1280 Financial Partners — that had formerly managed $2 billion at UBS.

Tada Images - stock.adobe.com

Advisors with $900M in AUM leave UBS for Morgan Stanley

A pair of advisors previously on a prominent UBS team based in Georgia have disembarked for Morgan Stanley.

Peter Knoop and Nicklus Caplenor, both previously part of OakRing Wealth Partners at UBS, have joined Morgan Stanley in Chattanooga, Tennessee. As part of OakRing, they had managed roughly $900 million, a Morgan Stanley spokesperson confirmed.

The other members of Alpharette, Georgia-based OakRing Wealth Partners remain at UBS, according to BrokerCheck records. The group manages roughly $2.7 billion in client assets, according to its website. It wasn't immediately clear if that tally included assets Knoop and Caplenor had previously been responsible for.

OakRing Wealth Partners has been frequently recognized by Forbes as the best in-state wealth management team for Georgia. UBS didn't respond to an inquiry about Knoop and Caplenor's departure. UBS executives have acknowledged in recent months that changes made to the firm's compensation policies last year would likely drive some advisors to the exits.

Stifel recruits $380M team from Janney

Stifel Financial is adding to its presence in New York with an advisory team pulled from Janney Montgomery Scott.

The Fort Hamilton Wealth Management Group, based in Brooklyn, New York, is joining Stifel's broker-dealer subsidiary, Stifel, Nicolaus and Co. The team had previously managed $380 million in client assets at Janney.

The Fort Hamilton Wealth Management Group is led by managing director George Prezioso and first vice president George Casazza. Prezioso started his career at Janney in 1983. Casazza started at Janney in 2001. Joining them at Stifel are the client service associates Theresa Kasler and Allison Prezioso.

Raymond James draws $347M team from RBC

Raymond James has added a team recruited from RBC Capital Markets to its channel for independent advisors.

Toll Wealth Management has joined Raymond James Financial Services, the firm's independent channel, in Las Vegas. The team formerly managed $347 million in client assets at RBC Capital Markets.

Toll Wealth Management is led by Daniel Toll and his wife, Tahirih "T" Toll. Joining them are senior registered client associate Issac Preis and registered client service associate Jaden Tate. Together they provide financial planning to business owners, families and healthcare professionals, among others. Daniel Toll began his career at Merrill Lynch in 2007 and joined RBC Capital Markets in 2017. Tahirih Toll started at Bank of America in 2005 and also joined RBC in 2017.

SageView buys $25B retirement consultant and wealth manager

The large RIA SaveView Advisory Group has acquired Capital Strategies Investment Group, a large retirement consultancy and wealth manager in Illinois.

Capital Strategies, which goes by the name Cap Strat, provides advice for $25 billion in client assets. Its wealth management division oversees about $750 million in assets. The deal, the terms of which weren't released, closed on Aug. 12.

Cap Strat was founded in 2003 and operates out of the Chicago suburb of Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois. Its team of 23 principals, consultants and team members are all moving to SageView. SageView is majority-owned by the private equity firm Aquiline Capital Partners, which invested in the firm in 2021.

Corient buys $1.5B former Raymond James team

The RIA-aggregator Corient has acquired an eight-member team that was formerly part of Raymond James' channel for independent advisors.

Corient, a Miami-based firm with just over $197 billion under management, announced this week its acquisition of Messick Peacock & Associates, a group out of Dallas with $1.54 billion in client assets. Messick Peacock had formerly been part of Raymond James Financial Services.

The team was founded in 2015 by Chris Messick and David Peacock and now works primarily with high net worth clients. Messick and Peacock began their careers at Northwestern Mutual in the 1990s.

The terms of the sale to Corient were not disclosed. The deal was arranged with help from the asset and wealth management investment banking team at Raymond James, according to Corient's press release.

Corient, which has 1,300 employees, is the private wealth subsidiary of the Canadian wealth and asset management firm CI Financial. CI Financial was taken private in November by Mubadala Capital, the private equity arm of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, in a deal the firm said implied an enterprise value of about $12.1 billion.

Osaic secures Blaze Credit Union’s institutional business

The independent broker-dealer Osaic has added a large Minneapolis-based credit union to its channel for institutional business.

Blaze Credit Union, a Minneapolis firm whose subsidiary Blaze Wealth Management oversees $850 million in client assets, has joined Osaic Institutions, which provides various support services to credit unions, banks and similar firms. Blaze Credit Union was formed in 2024 through the merger of Hiway Credit Union and Spire Credit Union, which Osaic already had a relationship with.

Blaze Credit Union oversees $4.2 billion in total assets and works with nearly 250,000 members in 28 branches. It also has a retirement and investment services division with a team of eight advisors. This partnership is the latest evidence of Osaic's efforts to strengthen its institutional division, which competes with similar offerings from firms like LPL Financial and Cetera. Osaic has 11,000 advisors and more than $700 billion in assets under administration.