Shortly after Morgan Stanley said it would sell off E-Trade’s RIA business in yet another acquisition for the custodian, one prominent executive quickly announced new plans.
Last week, Gabe Garcia, a long-time custody veteran and the head of business management and strategy at E-Trade Advisor Services, said on LinkedIn he had been hired at Cresset Capital Management, an RIA, asset manager and family office firm that has more than $12.6 billion in client assets.
In his new role as managing director of corporate development, Garcia will lead Cresset’s M&A efforts for RIA, multi-family office and breakaway advisor teams, he said in an interview. He has been tasked to formalize the company’s processes and increase Cresset’s awareness in the marketplace, he says.
“It's about the network and the relationships I have in the industry, and understanding how these businesses are run and some of the pain points,” Garcia says, specifically noting demographic changes to the workforce and increased complexity of firms as they scale.
Cresset will be Garcia’s first move out of RIA custody in more than 25 years. Prior to joining E-Trade in 2019, Garcia had been an executive at BNY Mellon Pershing for more than nine years under its former head, Mark Tibergien. Garcia also spent 15 years at Schwab, where he helped develop the custodian’s practice management program to help firms it works with scale, then known as Growth Point.
E-Trade had just entered the custody business when it hired Garcia at the end of 2019. The retail brokerage company had only recently closed its purchase of Trust Company of America and rebranded the RIA custodian to E-Trade Advisor Services.
About six weeks into that new role at E-Trade, Garcia told Financial Planning the custodian had “a lot of energy.” He had been looking forward to marrying the “innovative, digitally-oriented E-Trade culture" with “a really solid foundation from the TCA custody platform I think is going to bring something unique to the marketplace.”
By January 2020, the broker-dealer had grown its custody business to 225 RIAs, up from 220. It had been
Between the E-Trade, Morgan Stanley and, most recently, Axos Financial acquisitions — all within the last 3 years — RIAs on the platform have experienced ongoing changes and
“My departure had nothing to do with anything other than just looking for the next best opportunity for myself. This came across my line of sight and was very compelling,” Garcia says, declining to comment further.
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Axos Financial has yet to announce official plans for the custodian, although early statements from its CEO specified that it intends to
As for his new role at Cresset, Garcia is looking forward to being part of a smaller organization that can be “much more nimble” than the large corporations he’s spent his career.
Garcia had worked with Cresset’s founders, Eric Becker and Avy Stein, during his time at BNY Mellon Pershing when they were getting ready to launch the firm, he says.
