Around 15 years ago, the seeds were sown for Sanctuary Wealth's latest recruiting victory over Merrill Wealth Management.
That's when Sanctuary's managing director
Porpora's former boss Vince Fertitta would leave Merrill for Sanctuary in
The haul brought in a team of four veteran star advisors in Chicago with around $4 million of annual production, managing around $1 billion of assets, who will operate as a registered investment advisor.
"Relationships really matter," Fertitta said in an interview. Porpora had "developed strong relationships" in his past at Merrill, he added. "If we didn't have Phill, I don't know that we would have Burnham either."
It's those old relationships that new firms like Sanctuary, a hybrid registered investment advisor founded in
What took the cake
The Burnham team includes Managing Partners Corrigan, David Holtkamp, Sean M. Jucas and Kenneth Shay as well as Wealth Associates Basel Alwawi and Cindy Hehr. Their primary client base is high net worth families including "business owners, entrepreneurs, executives, doctors and physicians, professional athletes and philanthropists," according to a
The team performed due diligence for 18 months before their move, Fertitta said, and they had many options to consider.
The team engaged a consultant who helped them reconnect with Sanctuary's people, and the old relationship with Porpora was revived.
Ultimately, Corrigan's team gravitated towards Sanctuary for its strong platforms and freeing culture, Corrigan said in the press release, adding that his team had "outgrown the wirehouse" but wasn't ready to "go out on our own" to full independence — it was looking for a Goldilocks situation that offered both, which Sanctuary answered.
"The way the Sanctuary model works is, it allows advisors to operate and run their own independent businesses. But without a lot of the headaches that advisors dislike about having to run and operate their own RIA," recruiter Jason Diamond said in an interview. "This supported independence model, these platform RIA firms like Sanctuary, have seen a great deal of success and I would expect that to continue."
"Sanctuary's management team understood the model we were coming from," Corrigan said in the release, adding that the firm "provided us the means to operate in a way that was familiar, with more efficiency, fewer distractions, and the respect to allow us to run our business the way we think is best."
"Sanctuary will allow us to be more creative in how we acquire clients or books of business, as well as how we staff our office and plan for internal succession," Shay added in the press release.
Their chosen name reflects this focus on creativity and appeal to entrepreneurial clients, according to the group's
Sanctuary's "network" currently includes advisor teams, or "partner firms," in 28 states across the country with approximately $25 billion in assets under advisement," the firm said in the release.
Legacy Merrill Lynch excellence
Fertitta said the team was notable not only for its size — Sanctuary's average team has around $3.5 million in production and $500 million of assets, he said — but also for its range of professional designations.
Corrigan is a certified financial planner and certified private wealth advisor. Holtkamp is a CFP and chartered financial analyst. Jucas is a CFP, CPWA and a sports and entertainment accredited wealth management advisor. Shay is a CFA and former president of the Chicago Chartered Financial Analyst Society.
Corrigan was also a "Forbes Best-in-State Wealth Advisor for high-net-worth clients in Illinois for 2022 and 2023 and has also been recognized by the Financial Times," the press release said.
"I don't know too many teams who are as professionally designated as they are," Fertitta said.
For Fertitta, the range of specializations reflects advisors on the team who came up at the old legacy Merrill Lynch firm under John Thiel, who retired and was replaced by Andy Sieg in 2017. In the Thiel era, advisors were encouraged to reach their full potential, Fertitta said, by pursuing such credentials.
"When John retired, and Andy came in, they really shifted the focus away from some of that professionalism, and much more about new account opening — which seemed and felt, to some of the bigger teams, to be much more mass affluent, retail bank type model, versus getting better and better and better, and honing your craft and and working with complex situations and helping families create generational wealth, and all of those things."
Corrigan's
Changes to the thundering herd
The team's departure comes as
But long before Sieg's departure, the culture at Merrill, and other wirehouses, had shifted under parent Bank of America, Fertitta said.
Increasingly, advisors at wirehouses including Merrill were feeling "dumbed down" over the years and felt their skills atrophying at their firms, he said.
"What was in motion was just really more institutionalizing the advisor," he said, homogenizing the experience for clients. "If you walk into an office in San Francisco, you get exactly the same experiences as if you walk in Raleigh, North Carolina."
"That makes the advisors less entrepreneurial. And makes them lose their ability to use their creativity, and their skill set and their specific acumen when it comes to serving clients."
Places that still value individuality and focus on deep relationships can be a magnet for such advisors, Fertitta said.
"They need to know when things go wrong, then your nose is in the foxhole with them … When you have a relationship, it's beyond just a sales pitch."
Another team of advisors, managing
The Burnham team is also multigenerational, Fertitta said, so they'll have a chance to continue growing their business and passing it down to next-gen advisors on the team.
"This is a young group with a lot of runway, and they're going to be wildly successful, and we're thrilled to be a part of it."
