Trader Talk

(Bloomberg) — Nasdaq won the Securities and Exchange Commission’s support to help get more women and minorities on boards of companies trading on the stock exchange. The SEC gave its approval of a Nasdaq board diversity proposal in an order posted on the agency’s website Friday. The endorsement is among the agency’s most substantial actions

PNC Financial Services Group renamed its wealth businesses and is devoting more staff and financial resources to serving rich individuals as competition among lenders for affluent clients heats up. Personal-wealth businesses in the asset-management arm will be consolidated under the newly christened PNC Private Bank brand headed by Don Heberle, PNC said Monday in a

First United Bank in Durant, Oklahoma, wanted to expand its wealth management business. For most banks, the next step would be to buy an existing provider. First United took a slightly different, more cautious approach. The $11.6 billion-asset First United announced last month that it had acquired a minority stake in Exencial Wealth Advisors in

With wealth management M&A on pace for another record year, the CEO of one of the largest RIA consolidators says annual volume could rise by 200 to 400 more deals based simply on the demographics of an aging base of financial advisors. Focus Financial Partners has a “war chest” of $1.8 billion to deploy toward

J.P. Morgan Wealth Management has tapped former E-Trade Advisor Services President Matt Wilson to be its divisional director for the firm’s Central Division. The unit spans Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Michigan and Texas, states with about 1,330 J.P. Morgan advisors in the firm’s branches. Wilson had earlier tenures with Charles Schwab and

Mergers and acquisitions continue to sweep wealth management. Seven deals unveiled in the past three weeks provide a snapshot of the variety of acquirers angling to own a piece of advisory firms. The transactions involved practices and enterprises spanning nearly $35 billion in combined client assets, but only three of the deals followed the conventional

Ex-AdvisorEngine chief growth officer John Tyers is now the head of the independent advisor group at Wells Fargo Advisors, the company announced last Thursday. In the newly created role, he will oversee the leaders and businesses of Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network (FiNet), First Clearing and the Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) custody business. Kent Christian,

The largest tax professional-focused wealth manager is offering different ways to affiliate and moving closer toward a majority of its client assets being in advisory accounts. Midsize independent broker-dealer Avantax keeps losing financial advisors from its headcount, but more than three-quarters of the 145 who left the firm in the second quarter had $50,000 or

An advisor makes the momentous decision to break away from their wirehouse or regional broker-dealer. Now comes an almost-as-big but perhaps even tricker choice: start an independent RIA or tuck in to an existing firm. For the many advisors who face this choice each year, signing on with an established RIA presents clear advantages. They

After an internal investigation, Eileen Cure, the advisor who allegedly told staff she will not hire Black applicants, has been terminated from LPL, the firm confirmed on Wednesday evening. Denise Bradley, who goes by auntkaren0 on TikTok, identifies a “racist of the day” on the video-sharing platform. Bradley featured Cure after she says Cure’s staff

Multibillion-dollar GenXFinancial has purchased Boston Partners Group, creating the largest office of supervisory jurisdiction at one of Advisor Group’s largest firms. Andover, Massachusetts-based Boston Partners brought 53 financial advisors and $4.5 billion in client assets to its new parent firm. The influx boosted Nashville, Tennessee-based GenX’s OSJ, Innovative Financial Group, to $9 billion in client

Hightower has acquired a $2 billion wealth management firm and added the CEO to its executive leadership team as the firm ramps up efforts to retain its position as one of the industry’s top RIA consolidators. The Chicago-based aggregator has agreed to buy Farr, Miller & Washington, based out of Washington, D.C., for an undisclosed

The CFA Institute said 40% of candidates passed its Level II exam in May and June, the first time it was given using computers. The success rate was the lowest since 2010 and down from the 55% of applicants who passed the second level of the chartered financial analyst exam in December 2020, a 15-year

An LPL Financial advisor told her team that she didn’t want to interview any Black job applicants for an open position in her office, according to videos posted on TikTok and shared widely on social media. Denise Bradley, who goes by auntkaren0 on TikTok, identifies a “racist of the day” on the video-sharing platform. She

A plea deal in a former financial advisor’s fraud case fell apart after federal investigators alleged he was attempting to sell a home in Cape Cod and a wine collection valued at $100,000. The barred former LPL Financial advisor who backed away from the plea agreement is now facing five more counts of fraud and

Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), speaks during a Senate Banking Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, July 30, 2013. Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images The head of the SEC says crypto assets need a lot more regulation before they can move forward. “This asset class is

With taxes on the wealthy seemingly on track to increase under President Joe Biden, many affluent investors have been rushing to reconfigure their retirement strategies to lessen a financial blow in the future. But the strategy of choice — shifting money from a traditional IRA or 401(k) into a tax-advantaged Roth plan — involves a

Like the baseball teams acquiring star players to push for the World Series, AssetMark revealed plans last week to build on an impressive earnings quarter by continuing to be an active acquirer of financial advisor technology. AssetMark, which provides outsourced investment services and technology to independent broker-dealers and registered investment advisors, reported a net inflow

After spending his entire career with Ameriprise, a 34-year veteran financial advisor dropped the firm for its largest independent broker-dealer rival. Alan Kodama of Honolulu-based Pacstar Financial Group and a team of three other advisors and four office support staff across four locations in Hawaii affiliated with LPL Financial, the firm said July 12. Pacstar

The CFP Board elected Daniel Moisand as its 2023 board chairman, the certifying and standard-setting organization announced today. A principal at Moisand Fitzgerald Tamayo in Melbourne, Florida, Moisand is a 30-year industry veteran who has logged two decades on the board’s practice and standards, disciplinary and ethics committees. He has been a CFP Board board

The wealth management sector has seen a wide range of new technology in the operating environment combining the physical, digital and biological worlds. In this discussion, Financial Planning Editor-in-Chief Chana Schoenberger sits down with Koley Corte, senior vice president and global head of business transformation at Alliance Bernstein, Edward Jones Principal Zar Toolan and Stefan

Socially responsible bond issuances have grown rapidly over the past decade due to a rise in global awareness of ESG factors, but will their popularity continue to expand? In this Leaders forum session from Texas Public Finance, moderator Lynne Funk, innovative editor at The Bond Buyer, is joined by Adebola (Bola) Kushimo, vice president and

The nation’s largest independent broker-dealer is getting bigger at four times the rate it was only three years ago, with record metrics to match. After its acquisition of Waddell & Reed and onboarding of the wealth management programs of M&T Bank and BMO Harris, LPL Financial’s net new asset growth rate has surged to 12%

On December 12th, 1969 at the O’Hare Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, Loren Dunton held a meeting with thirteen leading financial service professionals with the specific goal of creating a profession that provided comprehensive financial advice to unprepared Americans. Overall, the meeting was successful and it became the official birthplace of financial planning as a profession.

Deutsche Bank has lost a string of U.S.-based wealth management executives over the past year as CEO Christian Sewing struggles to expand in the lucrative business of managing rich people’s money while keeping a lid on expenses. At least 10 senior bankers and numerous junior employees across the world’s largest wealth management market have left,

He built the biggest independent advisory firm in the nation, selling wealth management advice through fiduciary planners and making deals to oversee the most retirement plans in the country. Now Ric Edelman, who calls himself “the most highly acclaimed financial advisor” in America, wants to be the face of cryptocurrencies for Main Street and affluent

Startups may no longer be exciting and the middle-stage firms are where all the activity is. In this session from Arizent’s InVest conference, FIN editor and publisher James Ledbetter sat down with Lightyear Capital managing director Max Rakhlin, Centana Growth Partners partner Benjamin Cukier, Information Venture Partners general partner and co-founder Robert Antoniades, and David

Given their popularity and widespread use, people rarely think of IRAs as “tax shelters.” But truth be told, that’s exactly what an individual retirement account is: a legal tax shelter. However, in order to reap the benefits that traditional IRAs and Roth IRAs provide, taxpayers must comply with an assortment of rules. Such rules include

Another day, another RIA expanding into crypto. Wealthfront, a Palo Alto, California-based automated investment service firm, is expanding its clients’ investment options to include Grayscale Bitcoin Trust and Grayscale Ethereum Trust. The firm is the first to make it possible to gain exposure to cryptocurrency as part of a diversified portfolio with automation features like

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, June 25, 2021. Source: NYSE We’re halfway through second-quarter earnings. The results not only continue to beat forecasts by a wide margin, but estimates for the third and fourth quarter — and now even for 2022 — are continuing to rise. And most say estimates