Rockefeller Nabs $5-Million Morgan Stanley Team in Arizona
Rockefeller Capital Management has opened a new office in Scottsdale with a six-person team that was generating $5 million in annual revenue at Morgan Stanley, according to a person familiar with the move.
The team, which moved on Friday, is led by senior advisors Kenneth Milano, Richard Schmock and Kent R. Weaver, and managed $400 million in client assets, according to the source. The group, which also includes advisor Alexander F. Barrett and client associates Laura Rider and Abbey Mathew, focuses on wealthy business owners, according to the source.
Milano and other members of the erstwhile MSW Group—now renamed Legacy Family Wealth—did not return requests for comment.
Separately, independent broker-dealer Sanctuary Wealth, which was founded by a former Merrill manager, said Friday that it hired an eight-person Merrill team in Slidell, Louisiana, that was generating around $4 million annually.
The Rockefeller team is around the 35th to join the former family office of the Rockefellers since it was recapitalized in early 2018 with funding from venture capital firm Viking Global Investors. Now led by former Merrill and Morgan Stanley executive Greg Fleming, the firm has expanded into wealth and investment banking services for rich individuals nationally.
Rockefeller last month hired a $1.5 million producer from J.P. Morgan Securities and in June lured two Merrill teams with $9 million in combined revenue.
The four Scottsdale brokers began their careers with Merrill. Milano and Weaver joined the “Thundering Herd” in 2002, Schmock in 2006, and Barrett in 2011. Weaver made the shift to Morgan Stanley in 2008, followed in 2011 by Milano and in 2013 by Schmock and Barrett, according to their BrokerCheck records.
The other summer movers on Friday were led by 34-year Merrill veteran Ted Longo. His team, which includes his nephew Steven M. Longo, Chris F. Collins, and five client associates, generated $4 million in trailing-12 production on their $530 million in client assets, according to a Sanctuary release.
Ted Longo, who ranked #6 on Forbes’ Best-In-Louisiana Wealth Advisors list this year, did not immediately return a call for comment. In a prepared statement, he said he opted for Sanctuary’s “partnered independence” model because it provided a smoother transition path than if he had started his own advisory firm. He also noted that he had previously worked with Lili Kaufmann, Sanctuary’s director of transitions, who joined from Merrill in September last year. (Longo spent the first six months of his brokerage career in 1986 at The Stuart-James Company prior to joining Merrill.)
“The Longo Group will have control of their business and flexibility in how they serve clients, but they won’t be alone,” Dickson said in the prepared statement.
The younger Longo and Collins worked at Merrill for their entire 19-year and 16-year brokerage careers, respectively, according to their BrokerCheck histories.
Sanctuary, which clears through a unit of Wells Fargo & Co., two months ago hired a Merrill Lynch team overseeing $500 million in client assets in Walnut Creek, California.
