Financial advisor Jason Fertitta hadn’t spoken with his former supervisor at Morgan Stanley since he
But that changed about six months ago, when Ferttita drove to pick up Ron Thacker, take him out to breakfast and discuss why they should work together again.
“When I left, I told Morgan Stanley [Ron] was the best person I've ever worked for in my career,” Fertitta says.
Now, they’re working together again. Thacker has been named president of Fertitta’s $4 billion RIA, Americana Partners, where he will be responsible for the RIA’s organic growth efforts and, eventually, its recruiting. It’s a career move that underlines an industry shift of financial advisors — and executives — moving to the independent channel.
“I'll admit the first inclination was to think about getting back into what I'd always done — working for a major wirehouse,” Thacker says.
Thacker had been at Morgan Stanley for more than 20 years, where he oversaw more than 2,000 financial advisors across 13 states as regional director of the wealth management division’s central region. Prior to that, he had been at Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers.
At the end of 2019, there was a “mutual understanding” that it would be in Thacker's and Morgan Stanley's best interest to part ways, he says.
“Morgan Stanley is a great firm. They do a lot of things well,” Thacker says. “Like a lot of very large firms, it can be very bureaucratic. At times it can be quite political.”
A Morgan Stanley spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
The more Thacker researched the independent model, the more he saw its appeal, he says. In conversations with advisors who had gone indie, he found that they shared similar frustrations, he says.
In addition, he was looking forward to building something and being able to “make an impressionable difference in the organization that I'm at,” he says.
In his role at Americana Partners, Thacker will implement an organizational and accountability structure as the firm expands, he says. He has also been charged with spearheading company growth — via advisors bringing in more assets, but also recruiting. Thacker mentioned he currently has legal constraints to recruit, but that he will start speaking with advisors “at the appropriate time.”
The Americana Partners team holds less in assets than it did at Morgan Stanley in 2019. At the time Fertitta left the wirehouse, his team oversaw approximately $6 billion in client assets. Fertitta was the top producer in the central region’s private wealth part of the business, according to Thacker.
Americana Partners currently oversees nearly $4 billion in client assets, according to its most recent
Those assets had generated bonuses at Morgan Stanley, he says, but his team wasn’t going to charge fees on those assets at the RIA. Fertitta decided to leave them behind to alleviate higher insurance and reporting costs, he says.
The veteran FAs’ one complaint blotted their records for seven years.
Thacker doesn’t anticipate it will be a hard sell to convince advisors to follow him to a model he says is more entrepreneurial.
While wirehouses “may not be browbeating people” to push products on clients, “there’s certainly incentives and certainly persuasion to do certain things with certain clients,” he says.
“In the independent channel, it's always: Look through the clients eyes, never look through the firm's eyes,” Thacker says.
