Morgan Stanley Shuffles Leadership in Atlanta, Rehires Manager from RBC
Morgan Stanley Wealth Management has named a new management structure for its Georgia branches, shifting complex overseers and luring back a manager from RBC Wealth Management-U.S. as it seeks to stabilize a region that has lost some big producers this year.
Jameson will be assisted by Christopher “Chip” Anderson, a former Morgan Stanley and Smith Barney manager who left six years ago to join RBC. Anderson will be the Buckhead sub-complex manager.
“The Atlanta market is a key area for our region and one that has the potential to drive growth for the firm,” Balzano wrote. “As a result, we are adding additional resources to help us realize that opportunity.”
The wirehouse has shifted former Buckhead complex head D. Max Hilsman to run the private wealth business in Atlanta for ultra-wealthy clients. Hilsman a U.S. Military Academy graduate who has spent his entire career since 2001 at Morgan Stanley and predecessor firm Smith Barney, reports to Jameson, with a dotted line to Balzano and Mandell Crawley, head of private wealth management, according to the memo.
The reins of Jameson’s Perimeter complex have been handed to Rich Vaughan, who had been a non-producing manager in Alpharetta. Morgan Stanley will search for a replacement for Vaughan, according to the memo.
Jameson and Anderson are popular with advisers, and the firm is hoping they bolster retention while filling empty seats as the wirehouse re-enters the recruiting market, according to a former Morgan Stanley manager in the region.
Both are Smith Barney veterans, with Jameson having spent all but six years of his 39-year career there and at Morgan Stanley and Anderson almost 20 of his 26 years as a broker with the two firms, according to their BrokerCheck records.
Morgan Stanley has lost at least eight advisors producing more than $20 million from the Atlanta area this year to Rockefeller Capital Management, which is headed by former Morgan Stanley Wealth president Greg Fleming.
Rockefeller’s Atlanta efforts are run by Michael Outlaw, who managed Morgan Stanley’s Buckhead complex from 2010 to 2018 and also headed the wirehouse’s private wealth unit in the Southeast. The Morgan Stanley ex-pats who joined Rockefeller include the $3.3 million team of Kathryn Senkbeil and Graham “Chuck” Kennedy, solo practitioner Thomas McDavid, who produced about $2.2 million, and Michael Merlin, whose team generated around $10 million of fees for the firm.
An RBC Wealth spokeswoman did not immediately return a request for comment on whether Anderson will be replaced. His BrokerCheck history still lists him with RBC in Atlanta.
Morgan Stanley last summer sued an Atlanta broker managing $177 million in client assets who left for RBC and allegedly solicited his former clients in violation of his employment contract.
