Morgan Stanley Lands $10-Million Goldman Team in Seattle

A team of Goldman Sachs brokers in Seattle with $10 million in production has joined Morgan Stanley’s private wealth group, a sign of wirehouses’ willingness to selectively hire mega-producers even as they tighten their operational belts.
Midgley was interested in finding more flexibility in product choice and succession planning, according to Mindy Diamond, a recruiter who helped facilitate his move. He was frustrated with Goldman’s reluctance to allow him to make Sarem Mukhtar, who had worked with him for eight years, a partner on the team, among other reasons, she said.
“In years prior it used to be very rare to see a Goldman team leave,” said Diamond, who said she has moved six teams from the white-shoe investment bank in the past two years. “Goldman is a wonderful place and has the best imprimatur on the Street, but a lot of folks get to a place where they have outgrown this.”
A spokesman at Goldman, which in July acquired registered investment advisory rollup United Capital that caters to less affluent investors than the typical Goldman advisor, said he could not immediately comment on the Midgley team’s departure or Diamond’s comment.
A Morgan Stanley spokeswoman confirmed the group’s arrival. The wirehouse’s Seattle complex, which has around 120 brokers, last week named a new associate complex diretor who joined from Wells Fargo Advisors.
In addition to Midgley and Mukhtar, the team includes Michael Vint, who has less than one year’s experience as a registered rep, according to his BrokerCheck history. Mukhtar, who began his brokerage career eight years ago, has worked the entire time for Midgley at Goldman.
Midgley’s book at Goldman included about 40 households with some $2 billion of assets, according to a person familiar with the practice. He began his wealth management career in 2002 at Sanford C. Bernstein, according to his BrokerCheck record and sources familiar with his career.
Midgley, who also worked for seven years as an investment banker at Piper Jaffray, is at least the second advisor to leave Goldman’s private wealth management office in Seattle this summer.
Jacob M. Burns, one of the office’s approximately 15 advisors, joined JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s private banking unit in mid-July after 11 years with Goldman, according to his BrokerCheck record and a person familiar with the move. Burns, who began his wealth management career in 2000, did not respond to a request for comment.
In April, three Goldman advisors with $21 million in production and $6.6 billion in assets moved to UBS Wealth Management USA in Dallas, another example of a budget-conscious wirehouse that has been selectively hiring even as its total broker salesforce declines.
In July 2017, a pair of brokers who had been with Goldman for 12 years in Washington, D.C. joined Morgan Stanley, while a Los Angeles team producing more than $14 million left Goldman for First Republic four months later. Other Goldman brokers opened registered investment advisory firms in 2017 in Chicago and Palm Beach, Florida while a third Goldman veteran in Chicago went independent last year.
Goldman’s private wealth group has fewer than 600 brokers, excluding United Capital’s approximately 220 advisors in 90 offices, and is housed within the company’s asset management division. Its high-net-worth advisors on average have $4.5 million in production, well above big-bank competitors, former Goldman Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein said in a 2018 presentation.
the empire strikes back!!
Goldman is no longer the “Gold Standard” post the Volker Rule. They are now appealing to the masses with Apple Credit Cards and United Capital clients that have an average of $1M in assets per client…. They pay their people 30% in commissions and the fees are outrageous for their clients. Clients with large balance sheets get this and are pulling assets and the Firm that used to be the “Gold Standard” is now just another bank. It will never be the same firm it used to be. Lloyd left at the perfect time! Their brokers are leaving in masses and what is left is a bunch of junior people that are their to get The Goldman name on their resumes to move on…..
Nice one, Mindy!
This ought to be interesting. Morgan Stanley and Goldman both tend to be pretty aggressive when it comes to going after departing brokers who try to get clients to follow them. If I were Goldman’s attorney, I’d just point to the fact that MS always claims that trying to take “their” clients amounts to theft of intellectual property. I imagine it is hard to argue out of both sides of their mouth, those ridiculous twits.
Diamond is a true professional and a recognized roundtable recruiter. She would never lower herself to blog for biz. Class act. People can learn from someone like her.
She would never blog for biz? AH is now going to be “Distributing” her Independence Podcast. She also blogs on all major podcast channels including Apple iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify and YouTube.Yeah, right, buddy, she’d never lower herself to do that.
They took a check….period. Move on .