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Financial Advisor IQ a Financial Times Service

Nuisance Fines are Hurting Small B-Ds and Driving Consolidation, Warn Experts

19:09 11 March in In the News by rafferty

March 11, 2019 By Mrinalini Krishna, Financial Advisor IQ Regulatory and compliance asks are hurting smaller broker-dealers — typically those with fewer than 100-150 representatives — and forcing some of them to roll up into larger firms, warns Frank LaRosa, founder and CEO of Moorestown, N.J.-based Elite Consulting Partners. “Smaller broker-dealers are being strangled with the increased burden of Finra oversight. And both Finra and the SEC are coming down with more and more penalties for nuisance issues, which is really squeezing broker-dealers essentially out of the business. And what they're doing is they're rolling up,” LaRosa says. LaRosa says his team worked on several transactions last year and is currently working on a few such deals. While LaRosa is not saying regulators are going after small broker-dealers in particular, he does say the scale...

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Cetera pledges growth investments after surprise CEO exit — not cutbacks

19:23 08 March in In the News by rafferty

March 7, 2019 By Tobias Salinger, Financial Planning Financial advisor Pete Bush of Horizon Financial Group says he has noticed little or no disruption since the surprise announcement that his independent broker-dealer network is seeking a new CEO. “I will say this,” Bush wrote in an email. “I get a lot more recruiting calls sent to my voicemail and email trash box!” The 25-year veteran of Cetera Advisors and a predecessor firm met with Cetera Financial Group Chairman Ben Brigeman and other members of the IBD network’s board last week, days after the firm announced that Brigeman would serve as interim CEO due to Robert Moore’s exit for health reasons. Private equity firm Genstar Capital, where Brigeman is on the strategic advisory board, had only closed its $1.7-billion acquisition of a majority stake in the...

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Woodbury Adds 64% of Questar Reps, 86% of AUM

00:07 06 March in In the News by rafferty

March 5, 2019 By Janet Levaux, ThinkAdvisor But could the growth of the IBD and its sister firms prompt the private equity owner to consider a sale? Five months after it struck a recruiting deal with Allianz Life Insurance, Woodbury Financial Services says it has added 407 advisors — about 64% of advisors with Questar Capital and Questar Asset Management — with 86% of the advisors’ total assets under management, $1.8 billion, and 83% of assets under administration, $12.2 billion. The IBD says it added another 165 advisors (from NPC and the closing of its Capital One acquisition) and $9.8 billion in AUA over the past 18 months, giving it a total of about 1,600 advisors, $11 billion under management and $45 billion under administration. But could this growth pattern prompt a change of strategy...