An ex-Merrill team managing more than $1 billion is rejoining a former colleague at the regional wealth management firm Janney Montgomery Scott.
Janney Montgomery Scott, which has more than 900 advisors and $131 billion in assets under management, announced Sept. 15 that it's welcoming a Montvale, New Jersey-based group Market Street Advisors into its fold.
The team, formerly affiliated with Merrill, consists of six members and has roughly $1.1 billion in assets under management. In its move to Janney Montgomery Scott, it follows the lead of Bruce Milstein, another former Merrill employee. Milstein left Merrill in May 2022 to become a complex manager for Janney in New York.
Milstein said he worked with the Market Street Advisors group at Merrill, helping to build it into what it is today. He said the team's move shows the appeal regional firms continue to have for wirehouse advisors looking for greater freedom.
"Also, when you have been at the same firm for 30 years, it changes," Milstein said. "I think they were looking for something that reminded them of the past, where you have a culture that you can reach out to senior leaders and they'll take your call. This doesn't appear to be happening at a lot of the bank-owned wirehouses."
A spokesperson for Bank of America, which acquired Merrill in 2008, didn't respond to a request for comment.
Milstein said the brand names of smaller teams also tend to get buried at large firms. Market Street Advisors will have more ability to be seen in its own right at Janney, he said.
Read more:
"Financial advisors who are looking to move on often think they need to go to another wire or go independent," Milstein said. "What they may not know is you can find a place in the middle, at a regional space, where you can find both freedom and support."
Milstein said Merrill and Janney Montgomery Scott, which has its headquarters in Philadelphia, are both parties to the broker-protocol. That voluntary agreement seeks to prevent recruiting-related lawsuits among rival firms by setting strict limits on what sorts of client information employees are allowed to bring with them when moving from one employer to another. Milstein said he thinks Market Street Advisors will definitely be able to move over most of its business.
The Market Street Advisors team consists of John Fetherston, Louis LoGrasso, Jay Day and Irwin (Casey) Wolf — all of them financial advisors and senior vice presidents of wealth management — as well as account executives Pramvera Ruiz and Jeff Russo.
Wolf, the most senior member, joined the industry in 1976 and worked at Kidder, Peabody; Drexel Burnham Lambert; and Morgan Stanley, among other firms, before joining Merrill in 2009. Jay Day's career dates to 1986. He first worked at Morgan Stanley and then also moved to Merrill in 2009.
Fetherson, who entered in the industry in 1992 with a job at Merrill, said in a statement, "Janney's boutique culture and financial strength provides us with the necessary resources and flexibility to grow our practice and meet the needs of our clients."
