UBS Loses Two Teams in the South Producing Almost $17 Million
UBS Wealth Management USA has lost two teams of 13 brokers in the South who were generating almost $17 million in production in the past week.
The group includes UBS senior vice presidents Stephen Rice, James Kline, Andrew Cundiff and Jamie Holman, together with UBS vice president Harold Keith Henderson and first vice president Nathan Collums. They were part of a larger team called OakRing Investments, which includes three remaining UBS advisors in Montgomery, Ala., one in Birmingham/Chattanooga and one in Atlanta, according to the team website and the sources.
“It’s a big and unexpected loss” for UBS’s Deep South geography, said an internal source. Another source outside the firm said the UBS team spent about a year on due diligence before accepting the Wells offer.
Rice had been with UBS and predecessor PaineWebber since the start of his brokerage career in September 1997, while Kline joined UBS nine years ago after 16 years with Merrill Lynch, according to their BrokerCheck histories.
Cundiff similarly spent the first half of his 23-year career at Merrill before moving to UBS in 2008, while Holman also worked at Merrill for 16 years before joining UBS in 2008.
For Wells, the midweek hires represent at least the sixth team to join its scandal-depleted brokerage force this month. At least five other groups managing about $570 million have joined Wells offices in California, New York City, Connecticut and Florida from UBS and Morgan Stanley in the past two weeks.
In St. Petersburg, Florida, a team of seven UBS advisors led by Matthew Kilgroe left on Friday to start a registered investment advisory firm they christened Cyndeo Wealth Partners, according to an announcement. Kilgore and his team had been generating almost $9 million in revenue from around $1.2 billion in assets, according to Dynasty Financial Partners, which is providing support services for Kilgroe’s team.
“We wanted to have as much autonomy as we could,” Kilgroe said in an interview. “When you’re inside a wirehouse, you can utilize the products and services they have, but a lot of times that may not be the best situation for every client.”
Other advisors at the RIA are Peter Frantzis, Eric M. Branson, Thomas M. Kidwell, Christopher Ryan Quinty, Nathan Johnson and Adam Hess. Their new firm, which takes its name from a Greek word meaning ‘connect,’ custodies with Fidelity Investments and brokers through Purshe Kaplan Sterling Investments. A 29-year industry veteran, Kilgroe worked for 20 years at Merrill Lynch before joining UBS in 2012.
He said the team does a lot of lending for their clients, who are wealthy families, pro athletes and entrepreneurs, and wanted to be able to look outside UBS’s own bank for better rates and also wanted access to a wider variety of alternative investments through providers such as alternative funds platform iCapital Network.
Frantzis and Kidwell also began their careers at Merrill in 2006 and moved to UBS six years later, while Quinty began his career in 2011 with Merrill and joined UBS in 2013 according to their BrokerCheck histories. Branson joined UBS in 2012 after 16 years in St. Petersburg with Raymond James, Smith Barney and its successor firm Morgan Stanley, according to the database. Johnson and Hess began their careers at UBS four and two years ago.
For UBS, the departures continue a steady decline in the size of its U.S. brokerage force, which internal sources said has fallen almost 5% to 5,968 brokers servicing U.S. clients today from around 6,275 a year ago. The numbers make UBS’s force less than half the size of its three national “wirehouse” competitors—Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Wells Fargo.
A spokesman for UBS declined to comment on the moves or the firm’s strategy.
The U.S. unit of the Swiss banking giant retreated from aggressive recruiting of experienced advisors four years ago, focusing on reducing its overhang of forgivable loans.
Like its competitors, it has been emphasizing retaining advisors with loyalty bonuses and other awards for working on teams and selling bank products. However, UBS also this year raised hackles by raising thresholds on “grids” that determine brokers’ pay. (It has delayed by three months implementation of higher hurdles for team-based payouts that were to have become effective on July 1 in recognition of disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.)
In addition to the teams that left UBS this month for Wells, Rockefeller Capital, and Raymond James Financial, three UBS teams managing more than $800 billion left for RBC Wealth Management and Wells Fargo last month ahead of the Memorial Day weekend, along with a high-profile broker in Houston who joined Morgan Stanley and a Washington, DC-area team producing $7.5 million who joined Wells.
UBS has “selectively” been recruiting as well, with a particular focus on advisors who service very wealthy private banking clients. It hired a three-person team in Dallas last month from Sanford C. Bernstein who were producing about $13 million.
Well, I wouldn’t move to WFC but UBS is often the loser in the new recruiting campaigns. I guess many advisers still need a safety blanket and a “check”. The group that started a RIA did the right thing. That is the correct long term move for the advisers and for their clients. Good luck to both. Btw, is anyone left at UBS? I’m just wondering who will finally turn off the lights and lock the doors.UBS has such a low head count that they cannot afford to keep up with technology. We will see. I guess they could cut the payout again.
Where’s the blow hard that was piping off yesterday about Mendoza line advisers? Seems like half of UBS is leaving for one channel or another at Wells.
Certainly these guys are no “pikers”. Just sayin.
UBS really “soiled their own nest” when they announced their new and outrageous changes to the grid. Pretty soon they will be penalizing any advisor servicing account under 100 million! Do they think we have been hiding all these billionaire prospects?
I don’t know why anyone would leave UBS. They have fantastic leadership… Let’s just move everyone around to new roles and never change a thing. Keep doing the same thing but move some deck chairs around…fa’s are dumb, they wont notice. UBS is so generous in only taking money for business builder until September but you really can’t use much of it anyway. They are lightning fast at making changes like that. You can’t see clients in office until January but hey who needs an office now anyway?!? Phones going away so you can feel good about all the stuff you get to pay for out of production and get 2015 technology, fancy new headsets to be make calls from your computer while at home…oh wait. They did bring in big fancy curved monitors last year…and that grid. It’s so generous. Such flexibility for having to work from home. It’s a nice feeling to be guilty until proven innocent there. Eject under the cover of not being able to have the remaining fa’s meet with your clients while at home. Get out while you can!!! If people are going to WF and that is the better or two evils then you know it must be amazing at UBS. Go get that money or at least your freedom.
The BIG move is on
Bigger move
Yep, more UBS advisors are tired of the pay cuts (grid, bonus changes and mortgage mid-year pay reductions), the lack of a company strategy and they have a massive distrust of UBS leadership. Why stick around for deferred comp. and their Alfa program, there will be no funds to pay it out. And if history is a guide, they will reduce/trim and cut the program in the future. What is management doing to earn FA trust? Virtual town halls and cross-country drives. Sadly, more to leave.
When will UBS senior management realize they are losing way more than they are bringing in. The net loss recruiting each year is because UBS is a horrible firm to work for.
UBS has been dead as a firm for at least 7-8 years. What great talented manager would ever consider a position there. PW will finally die. Even the accountant who “leads” now can’t cut enough expenses to may this pig salable. Oh, maybe LP{L would buy them.
The process of changing firms doesn’t take place over night. Especially for these larger teams. This wave has been in the works for months if not years.
But it all started when Naratil lied and tried to sneak a non compete / non solicit in the annual def comp award. A truly scummy move that he lied about. And then had others cover for him. They treat people like pawns, move management around a chess board and shuffle deck chairs like on the titanic.
No one trusts the man or the rest of the management team. And frankly local management has no say in what is going on…they are reduced to impotent yes men peddling credit cards and over priced loans..otherwise they are let go.
Brokers can be lazy and forgiving but, as noted, the model is changing, Unfortunately UBS doesn’t have the scale to keep up with the big boys on the tech front so they scrimp on everything except compliance and manager head count. They had a chance. The wave is growing …once it crashes UBS will be a shell of the once proud Paine Webber.
@What tood me so long…
Love your moniker!
Bobby Anselmo heads technology and should have been shown the door years ago. He is incompetent and his entire leadership team from the home office to the field is completely inept. He is constantly reinventing the technology wheel while he still hasn’t fixed his prior wheel. This is the core of what slows productivity at UBS for FA’s on the front lines.
Tom Naratil – Chairman Americas demonstrates weak incompetence daily and should also be shown the door. They pulled him off the trash heap from the Paine Webber days. I was never a fan of Merrill’s culture itself, but Bob McCann who was Naratil’s predecessor ran the company well and put FA’s first. FA’s are last now – not even acknowledged. He’s in an emeritus golden parachute role but muzzled from view to the employees and public. Only he could save the company at this point. So sad what has happened at this firm. Productivity for FA’s and front-line client serving employees is down 50%.
Local divisional and regional leadership is equally incompetent and completely disempowered. No one understands how they even add any value. They seem to just show up for the free hotel suites at the annual award trips and hold pointless conference calls to tell you how great the firm (is not).
Get out while you can! The firm is self imploding.