Giant LPL branch adds $285M team after deal to fold into firm

LPL Financial's largest deal of the year is paying off, as the big branch it agreed to invest in last month picked up a significant incoming team.

Financial advisors David Rimkus, Donald Sharko and Thomas Phelan rebranded their Orland Park, Illinois-based practice as Harbor Lighthouse Wealth Management under their move from LaSalle St. Securities to LPL and one of its biggest branches, Financial Resources Group Investment Services, the firms said on Dec. 13. Harbor Lighthouse managed about $285 million in client assets with their prior firm, and they're using LPL as their brokerage, registered investment advisor and custodian while aligning with Financial Resources. Within independent wealth management firms like LPL, branches handle operational and compliance tasks for individual practices while fueling recruiting for the national brokerages by adding to their ranks.

LPL Financial

LPL made a deal with Financial Resources founder Bruce Miller to acquire the branch — which includes about 800 financial advisors with 85 banks and other institutions managing $40 billion in client assets — for $140 million plus additional earnout payments. The choice of Financial Resources enables Harbor Lighthouse to remain part of a firm more closely resembling the size of their prior midsize brokerage even as they became three out of the more than 21,000 advisors with LPL, Rimkus said in an interview. The need for technology enabling growth among new and existing clients and succession planning played a role in the move as well, he said.

"I've been thinking about what happens to my business when I'm gone. I thought we were lacking in my ability to create a succession plan that made sense," said Rimkus, 58, who founded his team 25 years ago after leaving a bank. "We can have our own identity yet still get the comforts of a much larger firm."

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Representatives for LaSalle St., which is the No. 28 firm on Financial Planning's IBD Elite rankings of the largest independent brokerages in wealth management, declined to comment on the team's departure. A fourth advisor previously with Harbor Lighthouse elected to remain with LaSalle St., at least for the time being, according to Rimkus.

The pending M&A deal between LPL and Financial Resources makes "a good fit for each other," according to Andy Kalbaugh, a former longtime LPL executive who left the firm in 2021 and unveiled the launch of his new consulting firm this month. While Kalbaugh noted in an interview that he's no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of LPL, he acknowledged he has seen the headlines about the firm's record advisor headcount and massive recruiting influx over the past two years among practices located at banks and credit unions.

"They're doing great," Kalbaugh said. "It was a good place to step out, because I knew they were trending in a good direction."

Rimkus has spent the past 34 years with LaSalle St. and a bank it acquired in the '90s. After that deal, he started his own independent practice located close to where he grew up in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. Most of the clients come from the same area, although they have since spanned the country. Besides the three advisors, the practice includes his daughter Emily Malfeo and Client Services Associate Debra Lapaglia. Rimkus credited Malfeo, the practice's operations manager, with preparing the team for the transition to LPL on Dec. 8.

"Sharing similar values with our clients being at the core of everything we do, we look forward to helping them take their business to the next level with our expansive tools and resource offerings," Financial Resources President Steve Lank said in a statement.

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The process of moving to a new brokerage and branch reminded Rimkus of cleaning out a garage, he said, adding that the "change has been very invigorating for me." The practice built its first ever website, where it will post content that has been vetted by LPL's compliance teams and create "more touchpoints" with existing clients and newer, younger prospective customers through emails, LPL-powered chat capabilities and texting, Rimkus said.

"I want our existing clients to be happier with their platform, and I want our existing clients to view us as the primary source for all of their assets — not just stocks and bonds," he said.