Wells Nabs $5.3-Mln Merrill Team in TN, RBC Hires New Jersey Duo

Wells Fargo Advisors and RBC Wealth Management-U.S. captured two Merrill Lynch teams this week in Tennessee and New Jersey, according to separate announcements.

In the larger of the moves, Wells hired a team of four advisors including Will David Coleman, Jeremy Stephens, Justin Webb, and Steven Ragan, who had been generating $5.3 million in annual revenue at a Merrill branch in Brentwood, Tennessee, a Wells spokeswoman confirmed. The group, who moved on Monday, according to BrokerCheck records, had overseen $680 million in client assets.

Coleman spent a rookie year at Waddell & Reed in 2005 but moved to Merrill the following year, according to BrokerCheck.

Stephens started his career at Merrill in 2011. He sojourned to BB&T Investment Services for five months between 2014 and 2015 before returning to Merrill, according to BrokerCheck. Webb began his career at Merrill in 2001, and Ragan started at Merrill in 2011, according to the database.

Wells ended 2020 with 13,513 brokers, down 6% from a year earlier. The company has hiked hiring bonuses and payments to headhunters in hopes of replenishing its forces in the aftermath of its parent company’s 2016 fake accounts scandal.

Separately, another Merrill team, Aaron J. Keith and Ryan Carr, who have 16 and 15 years of industry experience, respectively joined RBC on Wednesday in Florham Park, New Jersey, according to an announcement and their registration records. They had been overseeing $240 million in revenue, according to an announcement, which did not provide a production figure.

Keith had spent all of his career at Merrill, while Carr’s peripatetic career has taken him from Merrill to Morgan Stanley, Columbia Asset Management, UBS Wealth Management, Smith Barney, Credit Suisse, and back to Merrill, according to their BrokerCheck records.

“When deciding where to move our practice, we didn’t want to choose between small-firm values and large-firm strength and stability,” Keith said in a prepared statement. “RBC is the best of both worlds for our team because we have the autonomy to run our practice as we see fit, but we have support whenever we need it.”

The two moved along with an associate, Karon Blue, according to RBC.

The Minneapolis-based regional touted the duo’s move as one of the first to be done almost all digitally for clients with a new paperless account opening process, according to the release.

RBC, Wells Fargo and Merrill Lynch are all members of the Protocol for Broker Recruiting, which allows brokers to take limited client information when moving among signatory firms. Merrill has remained in the Protocol despite its 2017 retreat from expensive veteran broker hiring.

RBC, however, also lost a broker to Wells Fargo Advisors in Del Mar, California earlier this month. Reid Matthews left RBC on March 5 to return to Wells, which he had left in October 2014.

Matthews had managed $110 million in assets generating about $730,000 in annual revenue at RBC, according to a source familiar with his practice. He started his brokerage career in 2001 with Woodbury Financial Services and joined Wells predecessor A.G. Edwards & Sons in 2002, according to his BrokerCheck

“I am excited to return to Wells Fargo Advisors as I am able to utilize their world class resources for my [ultra-high net worth] clients, have accessibility to local wealth resources, be a part of WFA’s great team payout, and amazing succession program,” he said in an announcement posted by a Wells manager on LinkedIn.