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Financial Advisor IQ a Financial Times Service

Be Careful of Leveraged B-Ds Like Cetera, Advisor Group: Recruiters

16:56 07 April in In the News by rafferty

April 7, 2020 By Mrinalini Krishna, Financial Advisor IQ Moody’s has sounded the alarm about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the financial health of certain broker-dealers, such as Advisor Group and Cetera Financial. Recruiters are cautioning FAs about these leveraged firms because their spending ability to support the growth of advisors may be limited. Both Cetera’s 2018 acquisition by PE firm Genstar Capital and Advisor Group’s 2019 buyout by PE firm Reverence Capital were financed through junk bonds. According to a Moody’s report in June 2019, as a part of the Reverence Capital deal, Advisor Group planned to raise $1.6 billion in debt through a series of debt offerings that were rated below investment grade. Similarly in August 2018 Moody’s noted that for the Genstar deal, Aretec planned to raise $1.015 billion...

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Private equity owners of IBDs will be tested during the downturn

15:39 06 April in In the News by rafferty

April 3, 2020 By Bruce Kelly, Investment News How will they hold up as they deal with the fallout from COVID-19? Private equity investors have been major players in the independent broker-dealer industry since 2005, when two top-tier managers, Hellman & Friedman and Texas & Pacific Group, now TPG, bought 60% of LPL Financial. Five years later, they took the company public at $30 per share. The initial public offering was an unqualified success, with LPL shares flirting with $100 per share this year before the COVID-19 pandemic sparked a market sell-off. Other private equity managers obviously took notice, as they’ve been snatching up registered investment advisers for the past 0 years. Although broker-dealers are larger than RIAs when it comes to assets, B-Ds are less profitable, with margins in the single digits, compared with margins of 20% to 30% for...

Financial Advisor IQ a Financial Times Service

FA Hiring Amid Pandemic: More of a Pause than a Standstill

19:07 03 April in In the News by rafferty

April 2, 2020 By Mrinalini Krishna, Financial Advisor IQ The coronavirus pandemic and market volatility are taking their toll on FA recruitment. Despite firms such as Raymond James deferring “numerous advisor transitions, recruiters don’t expect a complete standstill, though. Instead, firms are adjusting the way they hire, and some advisors may already be on their way to making a switch. “I think that those who had already begun the interviewing process before the world turn[ed], and are determined to leave for whatever reason, I think are still looking for ways to do it,” says Danny Sarch, president of New York-based-based recruitment firm Leitner Sarch. Sarch is seeing more of a pause than a halt in recruiting activities. “It’s certainly slowed because if you had 1,000 people in the country that were interviewing, a certain very...

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Advisor Group Nabs LPL Exec to Lead Wealth Unit

15:42 31 March in In the News by rafferty

March 31, 2020 By Janet Levaux, ThinkAdvisor The Advisor Group of independent broker-dealers, which completed its purchase of the Ladenburg Thalmann in mid-February, says it has hired a former executive from LPL Financial and made a series of other leadership shifts. Gregory Cornick is now Advisor Group’s president of Advice and Wealth Management. He was with LPL for the past six years and served as executive vice president, treasurer and head of Corporate Development and Advisor Financial Solutions. (LPL is self-clearing, while Advisor Group and Ladenburg firms are dual clearing.) But Jamie Price, president and CEO of Advisor Group, insists the role being assumed by Cornick was “on the docket” prior to the Ladenburg deal. “We want to continue to forge the senior leadership team to drive our growth strategy …, and that’s not defined by...