Economy

LPL is determined to help advisors up their games in order to be able to serve clients who are generating new wealth or coming into possession of it.

Eric Rosen, the co-head of UBS AG's fixed-income, currencies and commodities business for the Americas, is leaving the bank next month, about a year after he joined, to start a hedge fund.

Proving that it is still in the competition for top advisory talent, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney has tapped competing firms to add nine new financial advisors with more than $1.22 billion in client assets under management to its forces.

Merrill Lynch has hired a two-member advisor team who previously managed more than $1 billion at Wells Fargo's Abbot Downing business.

A review of auditors that examine broker-dealers has unearthed an array of deficiencies in the process the firms use to evaluate their clients, including numerous of infractions that could amount to violations of SEC or FINRA rules.

UBS AG is starting a unit aimed at quantitative hedge funds that combines prime brokerage and services from its direct execution trading business.

Advisor-owned financial services firm HighTower has snapped up a Credit Suisse advisor team with about $1 billion in assets under management, marking the eighth team to move to the firm this year.

More than three in four advisors expect to continue selling variable annuities and allocate 11% of their assets under management toward these products, according to Cogent Research.

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney is cutting its brokerage complexes from 118 to 86 and its non-producing branch managers from about 150 to 85 as it puts its final touches on consolidating two brokerage firms that began several years ago.

Wells Fargo has heated up its recruitment this summer by ushering in a spate of new financial advisor hires with almost $1.4 billion in assets.

A new survey of broker-dealers highlights the extent to which their firms rely on back-office technology to manage and improve advisor relationships, while at the same time revealing broad dissatisfaction with the solutions that firms have currently deployed.

Birmingham, Ala.-based advisor group Bridgeworth Financial, with nearly $1 billion in AUM, has left Lincoln Financial to join the country's largest independent B-D, LPL Financial, in a move that demonstrates the benefits of scale.

Veteran advisors Vann Wilder and Van Martin are taking their $300 million team from Morgan Stanley to Raymond James Coral Gables, Fla. office.

Julius BaerGroup Ltd., the Swiss money manager established in 1890, agreed to pay about 860 million Swiss francs ($880 million) for Bank of America Corp.'s Merrill Lynch wealth management business outside the U.S.

As Morgan Stanley Smith Barney reportedly faces changes ahead for its brokerage unit, including slashing support staff jobs, combining offices and raising production requirements, all eyes turn to how any decisions may affect its advisor force.

FINRA levied almost $40 million in fines in the first half of the year and will likely doll out as much or more through the end of the year.

Neil Hattem has joined Stifel Nicolaus as a senior vice president in Los Angeles.

Proving that advisory competition is still strong, Merrill Lynch has hired a Morgan Stanley Smith Barney advisor duo with $377.8 million in client assets, and lost two other teams to other wirehouse firms.

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney has shuffled two of its top executives as it aims to bolster ties its Consulting Group business has with the firm's wealth advisory services and the clients its advisory force serves.

Looking to build out its wealth management division, SEI expects Doug Pugliese will draw clients at companies' top brass.