Wirehouse Wars: Morgan Stanley Hires Another “Top Woman” Advisor from UBS

Morgan Stanley Wealth Management has hired its second high-profile woman advisor in a week from UBS Wealth Management USA.

Alexandra “Alex” VanMeurs, who was managing around $300 million for clients at her UBS downtown Houston branch, shifted to the rival wirehouse last Friday. As previously reported, Morgan Stanley also on that day recruited Kathleen Entwistle, a Paramus, N.J., broker managing over $400 million in assets.

VanMeurs, a UBS senior vice president, ranked on Forbes’ “best-in-Texas” and “top women” lists this year and was an internal “Top 35 under age 35” UBS adviser from 2016 through 2019, according to her former website. She recently joined forces with Richard W. Nelson, a UBS first vice president and “corporate stock benefit” specialist, who made the move to Morgan Stanley along with financial advisor Rosi Burns and two client associates.

VanMeurs and Nelson collectively produced $3.74 million in revenue on about $420 million of assets in the previous 12 months, according to a person familiar with their books. She had worked at UBS since the beginning of her brokerage career twelve-and-a-half years ago, according to her BrokerCheck history, while Nelson had been with UBS for more than 11 years of his 17-year career.

Entwistle, who began her wirehouse career 19 years ago at Morgan Stanley, ranked #26 on Forbes’ Best-in-New Jersey list of top advisors and #94 on its list of “top 1,000 women advisors” in the U.S. VanMeurs this year was ranked #76 in Texas, and #393 in the top women’s rankings.

VanMeurs did not return a request for comment, and a UBS spokesman declined to comment.

The shifts come as both companies have revived their recruiting efforts after a multi-year hiatus that, with attrition, slimmed their ranks.

Like firms industry-wide, they also are focusing on hiring more women and racial minority groups. Women have comprised about 14% of the financial advisory community for several years, according to research firm Cerulli Associates, despite a growing number of female clients.

A Morgan Stanley spokeswoman declined to break out the number of women among its brokerage force of some 15,000.

UBS two weeks ago landed a $13 million, three-broker team in Dallas from Sanford C. Bernstein, and reached into Morgan Stanley for a $1.4-million solo practitioner in Phoenix in April and a producing branch manager in California in March.

Separately, Stifel Financial on Wednesday said it hired a broker from Merrill Lynch in Dallas. Cory Hargrave, an advisor since 1999, had been managing $90 million in assets at his former firm.

At Stifel, where he was the first new hire since the firm suspended settling new brokers in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, Hargraves will work at a branch led by former Merrill colleague John R. “JR” Koeijmans. They had known each other for a decade, the branch manager said in a prepared statement. Koeijmans joined Stifel in April 2019.