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Articles published 8/2013


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Victor Fetter: I'm not a fan of PowerPoint promises.

LPL flaunts its Dell effect to 3,000 advisors in San Diego at focus13 confab

Newly installed CIO and ex-Dell star Victor Fetter shows he means business at the IBD's annual conference

August 29, 2013 at 7:03 PM

Megan Carpenter: Custodian brands are not like McDonald's or Burger King.

Fidelity and TD Ameritrade show new teeth in RIA advertising -- albeit with giraffes, and children on summer porches

On the heels of Schwab's 'owning it' campaign, Fidelity aims to catch (and repaper) RIAs and TD goes for the soft belly of the industry

August 28, 2013 at 7:36 PM

Rob Bartenstein says wirehouses are better competitors than they're given credit for -- and not the boiler rooms they are reputed to be.

Washington Wealth, now part of the LPL OSJ realm, annexes a $220-million-AUA team in Seattleland

The ex-Wells Fargo team chose the name Kimball Creek to highlight its Northwestern roots -- but it's also a metaphor for the high the stakes their clients face

August 27, 2013 at 1:28 PM

Bernie Clark: I couldn't stress enough that if we didn't do well then our competitors would be right behind us.

A sometimes defensive Bernie Clark makes four points pertaining to Schwab's RIA custody business in an update to Wall Street

The overseer of Schwab RIAs explains the San Francisco giant's difficult-to-do-business-with reputation and the long rollout of SII

August 26, 2013 at 5:24 AM

Mark Hurley: The goal for us is not to build up and flip.

After more than two years of radio silence, Mark Hurley pings with a stake-taking in an under-the-radar RIA

The writer of firebrand reports describes his own company as 'boring' -- questionably -- but lately has lived up to his billing

August 23, 2013 at 5:15 PM

We knew if we were successful with all three of these deals it would require a herculean transition efforts.

Banyan reels in two more RIAs pushing its assets across the $4 billion line -- now comes the challenge

Peter J. Raimondi gets closer to his dream of creating a national firm with acquisitions of firms with a combined billion in AUM

August 23, 2013 at 5:14 PM

Sal Zambito: Many times these RIAs are large organizations but they haven't put a true business team together.

LPL Financial tells its faithful in San Diego that a fuller-service, more dependent model will get corporate support

With Philip Palaveev overseeing the project, LPL is working to install more management expertise in the crazy-growth OSJs it both supports and competes with

August 22, 2013 at 3:46 AM

Jewelle Bickford: Clients are happy to go where they want. One never knows who will follow.

A $4.7-billion RIA-under-investment-bank in NYC softens its macho edge by headhunting a top woman from GenSpring

Evercore will make Jewelle Bickford a partner and the gem of its outreach to the other gender

August 21, 2013 at 5:40 AM

Robert Clarfeld: It's a minority investment with revenues-sharing and they have no control over expenses.

AMG delves deeper into the RIA business with second deal -- of $4-billion player in NY

Its purchase of a stake in Clarfeld Financial Advisors, Barron's No. 3, shows the Veritable deal was, indeed, a warm up

August 20, 2013 at 3:18 AM

Ron Rhoades: Here is the rub: the plan sponsor has great difficulty holding the "retirement plan consultant" to account, given the low standard of conduct applicable to measure the potential liability of a non-fiduciary consultant.

Legal analysis: Why the Yale 401(k) letters, limits aside, should raise an alarm to plan sponsors

Ayres may not have it all letter perfect but his basic points have a legal basis

August 19, 2013 at 5:27 AM

Jordan Burgess: This information has been well-received by advisors.

Fidelity Investments puts hard numbers on the disgruntlement of 401(k) plan sponsors -- and launches Z shares with ETF-like prices

Advisors are gaining some ground but the crunch of fees and service on plan purveyors gets worse and worse

August 16, 2013 at 5:32 AM

Mark Casady: These latest distributions underscore how far LPL Financial has come since their initial investment.

As LPL Financial braces for a share sell-off and loss of two directors, a Citi analyst says it'll be good

Hellman & Friedman will shed all of its 12.6 million shares to 'partners' and TPG will reduce holding to 17% of LPL's float

August 15, 2013 at 4:46 PM

Abby Salameh: Trick your brain into making those tasks less dreadful. This is called productive procrastination.

Five reasons why 'summer-is-slow' is no excuse for an advisor to slow down

If you want to mail it in for a couple months, fine, but know that you're missing a chance to get real things done minus the distractions

August 15, 2013 at 5:28 AM

Charles Goldman: I believe entrepreneurs are the best solutions to hard problems.

Charles Goldman makes a green investment that involves black and white analysis

The ex-Schwab and ex-Fidelity RIA chief sees a future for a tiny fund that Morningstar rated in the top 1% of 182 in its first three months of existence

August 14, 2013 at 4:44 AM

Shawn Carpenter: We preemptively raised capital to take advantage of the growth we are seeing with advisors, hedge funds and portfolio managers.

Morningstar takes a big stake in a startup gunning to be the Bloomberg for RIAs

Flush with $8 million in VC dollars, YCharts is betting that its data feed and content can challenge the Bloomberg behemoth by filling a hole for wealth and hedge fund managers

August 13, 2013 at 5:35 AM

Ron Rhoades:  The broker-dealer, and its financial advisors, received way more compensation than the 0.85% annual amount they stated to Janet.

An X-ray of one affluent, educated and sophisticated investor's portfolio shows how it was chewed up by fees

Helping an ex-Fortune 500 retiree prepare for her appearance before Congress, the author waded through a mountain of paper only to discover that the woman was likely to outlive her portfolio

August 12, 2013 at 3:47 AM

Abby Salameh: We need to lift up the hood.

Abby Salameh joins LPL's largest branch office

John Hyland is hiring the veteran RIA business marketer after a long search

August 9, 2013 at 5:09 AM

New York brings out the grand-strategy-explaining mood and Dina met Bill Van Law in at this Manhattan hotel lobby to get him to talk LPL.

A few things I learned about the Raymond James RIA effort in an NYC sit-down with Bill Van Law

The St. Petersburg, Fla. company's appraoch to the RIA business will be to do more for bigger RIAs that hunger for fuller custody service

August 8, 2013 at 5:59 PM

Davis Janowski: That's something I can get excited about -- rather than writing to the 1%.

Davis Janowski gets scooped up by Wealthfront

The longtime IN technology voice will now straddle Silicon Valley and the East Coast in a new role

August 7, 2013 at 11:51 PM

Meredith Lloyd Rice: [Fee proliferation] is a trend but the RIAs are still very distinctive in their attitudes and preferences.

Cogent study shows one big RIA distinction getting swallowed up -- or not

It'll be a head-turner if, in fact, two-thirds of all retail assets are fee-based in 2015, but there may be more to the story

August 7, 2013 at 6:35 PM

Angie Popek: I knew this was what I wanted to do.

A $2.3-billion RIA in San Diego continues to grow as it hires talent from national powers -- this time a known Schwab quantity

Dowling & Yahnke last recruited an esteemed Deloitte partner and now its a pedigreed Schwabie

August 7, 2013 at 5:43 PM

Walter Bettinger: It's very difficult to take 'Talk to Chuck' and have that tie into, for example, our RIA business.

How Schwab's new 'owning it' advertisements position the firm to offer more advice -- and how RIAs factored into the brand rethink

CEO Walter Bettinger wants his company, long a kingpin in the discount brokerage realm, to become a 'challenger brand' again

August 6, 2013 at 2:32 AM

Dave Butler: 'Aha' moments don't usually come at convenient times.

A veteran DFA exec tells what enduring RIA success is made of -- and why the next-gen advisors will not disappoint

Dave Butler's front row seat on dozens of highly effective firms allows him to look past the surface to see what runs deep

August 5, 2013 at 2:14 AM

Dean Zayed:  We can be picky.

RIA TAMP for insurance agents hits a quick $700 million AUM then opts for Orion software

With 50% annual growth and 215 IARs, Brookstone made the switch from Albridge

August 2, 2013 at 3:27 AM

Louis Harvey: We are seeing naked fear.

Why the 'naked fear' from a Yale law professor's letters to 401(k) plan sponsors is still present

The threatening, finger-pointing nature of the epistles drew the blood, the lack of a remedy to the attack from New Haven keeps the wound from healing

August 1, 2013 at 5:49 PM

Sheryl Garrett is able to give her advisors a steady flow of quality referrals.

Ron Rhoades, a lawyer, asks: Has Sheryl Garrett invented an RIA future of attorney-like comp?

Members of the Garrett network find pitfalls using flat fees and hourly fees (people want to kill lawyers, remember?) but a template for a fiduciary future may be taking shape

August 1, 2013 at 5:27 PM

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