Wirehouse advisors

Executives say the Bank of America subsidiary likely benefited from clients in 2023 seeking a safe harbor from teetering regional banks.

The number of financial advisors at America's biggest bank dropped slightly from last quarter but was still up from last year.

The mega bank says more than half of its roughly 300,000 are already back in the office every day of the work week.

LPL also drew from Osaic again, RIA aggregators made some big M&A deals and Merrill rehired an executive who left to go to Citi more than six years ago.

Robert Daly was part of a star team that left Morgan Stanley in 2023 to join First Republic and has since been barred from the industry.

Focus Financial Partners also merges two of its RIAs and Captrust buys up two practices together managing nearly $2 billion.

A FINRA arbitration panel sided with a claimant who contended Wells and one of its advisors should have recognized telltale signs of elder fraud when their client decided to give away tens of thousands of shares of Aflac stock.

Cetera also names the next president of its wealth management division and Corient scoops up a $7.9 billion RIA in Maine.

Regulators accused UBS of not doing enough to monitor 22 brokers who generated commissions and sales concessions of syndicate preferred stocks.

The asset sales carry complexity requiring careful thought and expert advice, but they could prove beneficial to some wirehouse breakaways or RIA succession plans.

Homrich Berg also acquires a $6.4 billion RIA and Hightower takes a stake in an $800 million advisory practice.

The wireshoue plans to have a s setting up an Ultra-High New Worth Plus unit for clients more than $50 million in assets.

Raymond James and Merrill also announce recruiting deals, while LPL hires a head of cybersecurity from PayPal.

Fifth Third Bank also draws a big team from Truist, and Morgan Stanley from Merrill.

UBS is reducing pay substantially for sub-$750K producers and making smaller reductions for advisors on the higher end of the scale.

Brendan Krebs moved into the top recruiting role in January with a pledge to bring in advisors for Wells' wirehouse, bank-based and independent channels.

Nicholas Takahashi and his team are accused of deliberately trying to poach the clients of a former colleague managing hundreds of millions in assets and producing more than $1 million a year in revenue.

Morgan Stanley and Edward Jones meanwhile are giving their advisors new stomping ground in midtown Manhattan offices.

A new partnership with the tech firm Carta will position Morgan Stanley at Work to manage stock-compensation plans for more than 2,000 private companies that are moving toward IPOs.

Cetera also announces the retirement of its longtime CEO at the end of the year.