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Articles published 8/2014


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Peter Mallouk: We're laser focused on clients and absolutely not focused on acquisitions and breakaways and trying to merge cultures. I'm not trying to be the most well-known person in the industry.

By outing a reluctant star in Peter Mallouk, Barron's Top 100 advisors list yields a surprise winner -- Leawood, Kansas

Is it the water supply, fate or a bizarre coincidence that Peter Mallouk and Marty Bicknell, Barron's No. 1 and No. 2 advisors for two years running, are based in the same obscure 12,000-household suburb?

August 29, 2014 at 5:08 AM

Elliot Weissbluth will play moderator with a strong robo viewpoint -- by Hamburger design.

Elliot Weissbluth will referee -- with a human bias -- a debate on robo-advisors starring Joe Duran, John Michel, and Jon Stein

MarketCounsel Summit also adds a second panel: Fortigent's Jamie McIntyre mediating Envestnet’s Jud Bergman, LPL’s Victor Fetter, and ActiFi’s Spencer Segal on an advisor support futurist theme

August 28, 2014 at 5:48 AM

Jay Wells: Fees have become a huge concern. I'm talking to more plans about fiduciary insurance.

Warranties and guarantees come to the 401(k) game but can insurance really put the client first?

Unwilling to stomach new legal exposure, employers -- and their advisors -- are looking to buy protection

August 27, 2014 at 3:25 AM

Peg Pike: I looked at a number of opportunities. It's rare.

How one $1.3-billion RIA in Tiburon found its woman by taking the 'grueling' route

Steve Janachowski was determined to do 16-hour 'test-drives' of all candidates and finally Peg Pike proved more hard core than him

August 25, 2014 at 11:09 PM

Before boomers turned into Bobos, they were characterized as “selfish, entitled and unwilling to grow up.”

A New York Times article gets real on the topic of marketing to millennials

It's the what-do-women-want dilemma in different form but the answer is the same: Treat me foremost as a human being but don't waste my time or expose me to psychological mildew

August 25, 2014 at 6:43 AM

Kayla Flaten: Boomers assume that millennials want to work from home so that they can sit in their pajamas all day.

The big impression Mark Tibergien and his reverse mentor, Kayla Flaten, 25, made on me over a Manhattan lunch

With 37 years separating them, the interplay has an invaluable zing, buzz and usefulness to it; In other words, it's fun

August 25, 2014 at 4:01 AM

Stephanie Bogan is getting a break from airless rooms and fluorescent lighting.

Stephanie Bogan leaves United Capital for Costa Rica

Her former employer characterizes the move as a 'personal decision'

August 22, 2014 at 3:08 AM

Jason Del Col: Our vision of the next-generation of an RIA office is they can service $200 million to $300 million with a support team in Dallas and not a lot of infrastructure.

In calculated gamble, United Capital begins to build, not buy, growth in major cities

Joe Duran will still buy firms but his $10-billion RIA will spin out six snazzy startup offices in the next two years manned by graduates of its own training program

August 22, 2014 at 3:04 AM

Todd Clarke: Advisors who are being advised to sell their businesses in order to

Why shock-and-awe over low succession planning rates is unhelpful and distasteful

Most RIA owners want to own their firm into their 70, even 80s, 90s so let's change the conversation to one of sticking around constructively

August 21, 2014 at 6:05 PM

Ryan Marcus: I said, I don't care what it takes.

Fresh off an RBC exit, Ryan Marcus lands with Joe Duran

The recently departed face of RBC's RIA custody will tackle the Northeast corridor of the US for United Capital

August 19, 2014 at 10:42 PM

Brigitte Posch:This is a risk that we believe is currently underestimated by the market and is the key basis for our negative view on the sector.

Babson Capital's Brigitte Posch travels to Russia with an entourage and comes away with an insider's view of the investment landscape

The former head of PIMCO emerging markets finds some comfort in the substance of the Eurasian bear's central bank

August 19, 2014 at 7:10 PM

Bill Hortz: I'm not going to waste anyone's time.

An RIA innovation co-op is born with Fidelity and Pershing among the founding members

Schwab Advisor Services declines comment and TD Ameritrade respectfully declines, citing a full plate of Veo initiatives

August 19, 2014 at 12:14 AM

Ed Beggs: This past year, we had over 45 million downloads of 32,000 forms in our library processed by 115,000 users from 15 custodians and clearing firms, and 350 broker-dealers.

Laser App celebrates its RIA business quasi-monopoly by throwing a summit for all of whom it surveys

It's the killer app of the paper blob and it shares the wealth each year with a come-all B-to-B event

August 16, 2014 at 2:58 AM

Neal Massand: I don't consider us to be hacks.

Why almost nobody seems fazed by an ominous lawsuit hanging fire against Financial Engines

Investors show no panic and lawyers are not seeing what the patent troll is getting at but trouble could lurk

August 15, 2014 at 4:59 PM

Mike Alfred: Fidelity's gone from being generous to being assured of being generous.

How exactly Fidelity Investments extracted itself from a legal and HR quagmire and why it'll cost far more than the public $12-million amount

The settlement's small print reveals Fidelity employee may receive additional hundreds of millions of dollars in value over time

August 14, 2014 at 5:01 PM

Fred Tomczyk: This extrapolates conclusions from that flow to retail order flow .... If you want to try to draw conclusions from one to another, you do so at your own peril.

Fred Tomczyk responds to a Wall Street analyst who cites leaked first draft of report written by three professors

The paper purports to have found trade order-routing conflicts used by the retail brokers, including TD, but any final draft may be months away

August 12, 2014 at 10:57 PM

Eric Baggesen: What you have to ask yourself is, can you trade your way to success with $300 billion?

WSJ: CalPERS questions its own ability to execute winning trades

Candidates for the chopping block in the pension fund's strategy rethink include individual stocks and hedge funds -- and a retreat from its accustomed role as trading macher

August 12, 2014 at 4:08 PM

Marty Bicknell: The thing I manage is reputational risk.

Marty Bicknell adds an investment bank to his $10-billion RIA and $26-billion asset manager

The CEO of Mariner Holdings prefers not to throw his wealth management clients to the M&A wolves when they liquidate big companies

August 11, 2014 at 9:09 PM

Joe Lonsdale: Wealth management is designed for the 1950s, not this century.

Takeaways from a New York Times article about Addepar

The Mountain View, Calif. start-up kept it close to the vest but revealed who they believe uses big data to good effect

August 8, 2014 at 3:25 AM

Frank Campanale: When you find competent private bankers in almost every case they have been successful at bringing business over and growing substantially.

How Frank Campanale's heist, so to speak, of young BNY Mellon Wealth Management stars fits into a bold millennial strategy

The morphed E.F. Hutton venture that is now Lebenthal looks like anything but a retirement home for dusty old brokers from yesteryear

August 7, 2014 at 7:53 PM

RBC got Ryan Marcus to shake things up. He began to and he's leaving.

Ryan Marcus leaves RBC Advisor Services as clients and recruiters openly speculate that his drive was mismatched with his giant employer's bankerly ways

Despite a string of high-profile departures, RBC's US brokerage subsidiary is determined to keep a hand in the RIA custody business

August 6, 2014 at 12:38 PM

Nick Georgis: We're told by our clients that they're not getting this help anywhere else.

What tidbits jumped out of Schwab's business update to Wall Street -- including the two underscored advantages relating to Schwab Advisor Services

Braving 'ahems' from Fidelity and Pershing, Bernie Clark claims Schwab is now the preferred vendor to roll-ups and Nick Georgis says Schwab stands alone as a business consultant to RIA firms

August 4, 2014 at 11:21 PM

Jim Hagedorn: We went from $350 million to $1 billion in seven years and most of that wasn't the market. It was mostly new clients.

How a Chicago RIA of PWC origin jumped to $1 billion by lacing its DFA approach with alternative assets

Playing on its base, Chicago Partners just hired a Guggenheim portfolio manager to oversee its first proprietary alt fund to woo ultra-HNW families

August 4, 2014 at 3:48 AM

Lars Knudsen: I think they're the best of the best.

HighTower Advisors shows its breadth of appeal by nabbing a 25-year RIA veteran with Moss Adams DNA

The Great Northwest's Triad Wealth Stewardship is now Bellevue Hightower and will stick with Tamarac after a long trial period

August 1, 2014 at 6:34 PM

Matt Wilson has replaced Brian Davis as head of Scottrade's custodian and is presiding over its acute strategy shift.

After cutting loose its RIA chief, Scottrade is culling some RIAs and imposing an 'unpublished' $12,000 fee on others

Brian Davis is gone and the St. Louis firm is dealing with an unwelcome P&L effect after open invitations to all RIAs of all sizes produced more expenses than revenues

August 1, 2014 at 6:26 AM

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