Morgan Stanley keeps racking up unsolicited First Republic advisors following the regional bank's misfortunes in the banking crisis that began last month.
Friday, the wirehouse hired a team of 12 — led by four financial advisors — managing $3 billion of assets in San Francisco. The move was unsolicited, a spokesperson for Morgan Stanley confirmed in an email, adding to well over a dozen of the same nature from the past month — which total at least 21 at this point, based on media reports.
The team's advisors, Sean F. Bricmont, David Dudek, Stephen R. Marotto and Randy J. Peterson, are all joining Morgan Stanley as managing directors. Their team reported $23 million of trailing 12-month revenue, a person familiar with the matter said. All are still registered with First Republic on BrokerCheck profiles as of this writing.
Many of the dozens of advisors who left First Republic in the past month had spent the bulk of their wealth management career at other industry firms, often coming from the wirehouses. This team appears to have been made up of mostly veterans of First Republic, who in some cases joined the wealth industry there.
Bricmont joined First Republic in 2006 from Nelson Capital Management where he had been a portfolio manager, according to his LinkedIn profile, and he left as a managing director. Dudek joined the bank in 2014 from Andersen Tax and became a wealth manager at the firm, leaving as a managing director, according to his LinkedIn profile. Marotto joined in 2008 from PricewaterhouseCoopers where he had been an associate, his LinkedIn profile said. He also transitioned to wealth management and cut his teeth in the field at First Republic, where he, too, moved up over the years to become a managing director. Peterson's LinkedIn profile says he joined in 2006 from what was then U.S. Trust, prior to its acquisition by Bank of America. It is now the Bank of America Private Bank. He left First Republic as a senior managing director and portfolio manager.
First Republic helped Bricmont achieve recognition this year, for the fifth consecutive year, as one of Barron's top-ranked advisors. Dudek and Marotto had also achieved accolades in Forbes' Top Next-Gen Wealth Advisors rankings during their time at the firm.
In another local move Morgan Stanley confirmed yesterday, advisor John Paul Garofalo returned as a junior team member based in the Los Angeles area, having just left a month ago for First Republic with a team that managed $1.2 billion. Garofalo was registered with his old employer again as of April 13, according to BrokerCheck. He is still also registered with First Republic.
The wirehouse touched $6 trillion of total client assets, including $4.6 trillion in its wealth unit, at the end of the first quarter and is marching on in its plans to achieve $10 trillion.
On Friday morning, RBC Wealth Management also announced that it had hired a team of two First Republic advisors in San Francisco, where First Republic is headquartered — Mark Allen Friedman and Mitchell Ryan Peters, who had managed $400 million of assets. That move was also unsolicited, a spokesperson confirmed in an email Friday.
