RIAs

TD Ameritrade Institutional drew a record 441 breakaway brokers to its platform for independent registered investment advisors in fiscal 2012, a 27% increase from a year earlier.

Among the big deals this week: First Allied buys Legend from Waddell & Reed to form a firm with $28 billion under management.

Morgan Stanley Wealth Management vice chairman Paul Hatch has said publicly that these reps-as-portfolio-manager programs are "a permanent change."

In a continued push to reform regulation for advisors, five independent financial firms have joined the Financial Services Institute.

Forget about fake scares: Advisor spends Halloween holed up at "secret" church to recharge laptop and reach out to clients.

From the start, three has been the magic number at Philadelphia-based Firstrust Financial Resources.

Amid the driving wind and rain, advisors battled back with generators, data backups ... and chainsaws.

Financial advisors on the East Coast have solid reasons to be worried about Hurricane Sandy – and even those far from the wreckage should be concerned, too. Advisors’ and clients’ safety rank first, but advisors also have to be concerned about their offices and property, as well as those of their clients’ and their clients’ relatives. As vital as proper insurance coverage is, it often will not cover all losses, nor losses from the disruption of business. How prepared are you and your firm to deal with a major disaster, like Sandy? Far too many advisors have no disaster recovery plan to rely on for times like this. Here are 5 questions to consider regarding you, your firm and your clients after the worst of the hurricane strikes.

For a new RIA to be managing $520 million for some 3,000 investors within six years is noteworthy. When that RIA was founded by an estate planning attorney, there must be a surprising reason.

Brown Advisory, a Baltimore-based independent investment management firm, hired Christopher Bartlett as a partner in its Baltimore office.