Goldman taps Siegler to head RIA strategy

Goldman Sachs is continuing its overhaul of its wealth management division with the appointment of a head of RIA strategy.

The Wall Street titan announced internally on Thursday that Adam Siegler, a managing director at Goldman in New York, has been named head of the One Goldman Sachs Registered Investment Advisor strategy. The appointment comes as Goldman Sachs continues to move away from a previous plan to build an internal business catering to regular savers and investors and refocus on its strength in working with the ultrawealthy.

Mary Athridge, a Goldman Sachs spokesperson, said Goldman has decided it's better suited to providing services to registered investment advisors rather than working with retail investors directly.

"Bottom line, we have decided that we will serve the RIA community rather than operate our own RIA," she said.

Under Siegler's leadership, Goldman's RIA strategy will offer advisors access to various lending and banking products, asset management products and capital markets, among other things. Goldman Sachs has also been making connections with independent RIAs in recent months by landing deals to act as an asset custodian for various investment advisors. The Securities and Exchange Commission generally requires advisors to hold stocks, mutual funds and other assets at banks, brokerages or other third parties to provide an additional layer of protection against fraud.

Creative Planning, a large Overland Park, Kansas-based firm with $245 billion under management, added Goldman to its list of asset custodians in July. Goldman later reached a deal to sell its Personal Financial Management unit, which had served mostly retail customers, to Creative Planning for an undisclosed amount.

That sale marked Goldman's most public step to reconcentrate its forces on serving ultrahigh net worth clients. The firm's remaining roughly 1,000 advisors will mainly work with clients who have at least $10 million in assets and $60 million on average.

Read more: IRS crackdown on wealthy tax dodgers puts industry on alert

Before Siegler's appointment, Goldman's RIA strategy had been in the hands of Padi Raphael, the global head of the firm's third-party wealth business. Raphael took on the RIA responsibility following the departure in February of Joe Duran, who joined Goldman in 2019 when his firm United Capital was swooped up by the large investment bank in a $750 million purchase.

Siegler, who joined Goldman in 2018 and became a managing director the following year, will continue to lead the firm's advisor solutions unit, its Americas retail client segment for equities and its private investor product group and Goldman Sachs Select. He was unavailable for comment on Thursday.

Speaking at the Barclays Financial Services Conference in New York on Tuesday, Goldman CEO David Solomon said one of his big goals has been to simplify the firm's wealth management plans. The decision to concentrate Goldman's internal wealth management business on high net worth clients is a big part of that. But that doesn't mean the firm is abandoning retail investors. 

"We continue to service RIAs very broadly across a broad platform and we do think that's an opportunity to bring more assets into our asset management business," Solomon said, according to a transcription of his remarks by the financial services firm Seeking Alpha.

Read more: Citi plans cuts as part of overhaul of tops of wealth management and other units

Goldman's primary investment banking business has been floundering in recent times amid a dearth of large merger and acquisition deals and initial public offerings. Looking for a revenue source that's less subject to the economic tides, Goldman has been seeking to take cues from Morgan Stanley, which has been doing a blockbuster wealth management business in recent years.

Goldman's results have been mixed so far. Reporting its second-quarter earnings in July, the firm said its assets under supervision had increased by nearly 9% year over year to a record of $2.71 trillion. Still, Goldman's wealth management division recorded a net earnings loss of $208 million.

Louis Diamond, an industry recruiter at Diamond Consultants, said he has little doubt Goldman's pivot back to ultrahigh net worth clients will succeed, given enough time.

"That's their real bread and butter, and there's still going to be plenty of growth in that market," he said.