Wirehouses

Three former Morgan Stanley Smith Barney advisors have taken their business to Stifel Nicolaus to start an office in Madison, Connecticut.

Morgan Stanley and Citigroup have pushed the deadline for determining the fair market value of their Morgan Stanley Smith Barney joint venture to Sept. 10 as they wait for an independent appraisal to help reconcile their opposing values of the business

A win for Morgan Stanley in a fight with Citigroup Inc. over the value of their brokerage joint venture could show the firm is playing a losing hand.

GoldenTree Asset Management LP, a money manager overseeing $15.9 billion in assets, hired Daniel Ornstein from Morgan Stanley to co-head its trading business.

Even as Merrill Lynch moved to a $40 million settlement in response to a class action lawsuit this week, some experts ask whether it will be enough to satisfy some several thousand advisors who left the firm following its acquisition by Bank of America.

Merrill Lynch formally agreed to a $40 million settlement to a class action lawsuit brought by two of its former advisors regarding their deferred compensation on Friday, a decision that will potentially impact more than a thousand advisors with production levels of $500,000 and less.

Merrill Lynch is expected to head into a New York court Friday and hammer out a settlement that could potentially affect the deferred compensation of thousands of financial advisors that have left the firm since its 2008 combination with Bank of America.

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.

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.

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.

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.