Economy

A final handshake on Morgan Stanley’s acquisition of Smith Barney will tie up some lingering loose ends, including a smoother clearing process for client assets, for one of the largest wealth management industry deals in the past decade.

Morgan Stanley will buy the rest of its wealth-management joint venture with Citigroup Inc. as soon as next week, capping a four-year effort to reshape the investment bank into a more stable firm reliant on the retail- brokerage business.

LPL Financial hired an ex-SEC official as its new general counsel as the firm continues to restructure its management team.

Financial institutions should develop distinct service offerings for young investors that speak to them at their life stage.

After seven years with another independent broker-dealer, an Omaha, Neb,. team has returned to Securities America.

Cetera will provide the Wells, Minn.-based bank with wealth management services and support, including the investing tools clients need.

Raymond James announced Wednesday it hired Claire Friedrichs as first vice president of investments.

The Bakersfield, Calif.-based financial institution was drawn to LPL’s retirement planning capabilities, technology platform and in-house insurance services.

LPL Financial, the nation’s largest independent broker-dealer, has reached $50 billion in total RIA assets under custody, doubling its year-ago total.

The firm snapped up two Morgan Stanley advisors and former branch manager at Ameriprise.

The San Francisco-based regional bank says it plans to add as many as 100 people to the team over the next two years.

Less than a week after landing another Morgan Stanley advisor, Raymond James has lured a Midwestern group with over $240 million in assets under management from Morgan Stanley to its independent-broker dealer.

Wells Fargo Advisors has hired nine financial advisors from Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and RBC Capital Markets with $1.12 billion in assets under management.

Eight former directors overseeing mutual funds for Morgan Keegan & Co. settled, without paying any penalties, U.S. regulatory claims that they allowed assets backed by subprime mortgages to be overvalued as the housing market collapsed in 2007.

John David “J.D.” Joyce and his team moved to Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network in Houston on May 23.

RCAP CEO Nick Schorsch says the deal could be a "tipping point" in a new wave of private equity investment in independent broker-dealers.

Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer James Gorman said his firm’s wealth-management unit can earn a pretax margin of more than 23 percent by 2015 as interest rates and stock markets climb.

Morgan Stanley has a plan to boost return on equity in fixed-income trading above its cost of equity after four of the five units failed to meet that metric last year, Chief Executive Officer James Gorman said.

Royal Bank of Canada, the country’s largest lender by assets, will consider acquisitions of as much as $4.9 billion as it seeks to expand its wealth- management unit, Chief Financial Officer Janice Fukakusa said.

UBS gave its force of about 7,000 U.S.-based advisors new compensation incentives to use financial plans with clients this year. The plan increases the pay their financial advisors receive when creating those plans, and has resulted in an uptick in their adoption so far this year