Economy

Insights gained at humble jobs long ago have helped these planners shape their messages to clients.

A former UBS AG municipal-bond executive told an ex-colleague to forget about a transaction as they discussed how to handle an expanding government probe of bond big rigging, the second man testified at trial.

Merrill Lynch Wealth Advisor Ted Murphy does not usually tell his clients that he is an Olympic silver medalist, but says that his rowing career has prepared him for the discipline that he applies to his career today.

Stifel CEO Ron Kruszewski explains why Knight Capital's survival was important following last week's costly software malfunction.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has grown its new financial benefit plan assets to a record $20 billion this year as it leverages stronger ties between its bank and brokerage forces.

Creative Management Group will apply its ProjectDouble program in effort to help advisors double their AUM.

Citigroup Inc., the third-largest U.S. bank by assets, started an investment banking joint venture in China that will give it access to the world's second-biggest market for share sales.

An arbitration panel has struck down an investor's $1 million plus claim against Morgan Keegan's troubled bond funds, citing the standard industry warning "Past performance is not guarantee of future results."

LPL Financial has announced an affiliation with Advantage Financial Group that will bring client assets of about $2 billion to LPL.

There have been more advances in technology for independent advisors in the past decade than there were in the previous 30 years. And the speed of this change is accelerating even faster today, giving advisors more tools to provide even better service to an even larger group of clients.

In the ongoing consolidation of the independent B-D space, insurer AIG's acquisition of Woodbury Financial Services brings the smaller firm in from the cold where it has become increasingly challenging to survive without a larger parent company.

You can always just add an advisor to the mix, but Kristen Pruitt, vice president of business development at Investment Professionals Inc., makes sure the cultural fit is right-or else the whole thing can fail.

When relatives are your supervisors and employees a special set of problems arise.

American International Group will acquire the independent broker-dealer from the Hartford Financial Services Group.

LPL Financial reported second quarter net income of $39.5 million, down $6 million compared to $45.5 million in the same quarter of 2011. Net revenues for the second quarter of 2012 increased 1.5% to $907 million, from $894.0 million in the prior year period.

Merrill Lynch Wealth Management has snapped up a financial advisor duo with $789.5 million in client assets under management months after they joined Barclays Wealth Management.

UBS Wealth Management Americas reported $211 million in pre-tax profit for the second quarter on Tuesday, up 28% from the same quarter last year, as the division continued to grow its financial advisor headcount.

Wealth managers are still struggling to create a full-service family office practice on a mass scale primarily because most advisors still aren't taking the entire family into consideration. Here are some ideas that can help.

The Swiss financial services firm said it suffered $357 million of losses from "the gross mishandling of Facebook's market debut" by Nasdaq OMX Group and that it will "pursue compensation for the full extent of our losses."

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney has scaled back its number of total regions to 12 from 16.