When Franklin Roosevelt was creating the Securities and Exchange Commission, he knew the perfect candidate to head up the new agency a Wall Street veteran notorious for his ability to manipulate stocks. Who better to teach the tricks of the trade...
Q: I received customer letters, written after a nasty falling-out, that my firm said would appear on my internal U4, but not my public statement. The clients had a very bad separation from my team. They all wrote the same letter, over two years...
It would seem like a nice problem to have too many clients. Unfortunately many reps have too many of the wrong type of clients. It doesn't have to be this way, of course. We are in the midst of arguably the best affluent client acquisition...
Describe your practice in one word.Emerging. A prospecting pick-up line that works.Nice assets! Favorite stress-reducer?Working out. What would you be if not an advisor?Professional golfer. Sunnyside up, once-over or scrambled?Egg whites. The...
Thinking of starting a limited liability corporation? If so, you're not alone. About 80 percent to 90 percent of new practices choose that form of business structure, according to Philip Palaveev, senior consultant at Moss Adams, a Seattle...
When advisors decide to embark on a job search, they often overlook one very important firm to evaluate: their current one. It's an understandable oversight. Many advisors begin a search out of specific dislike for their current employer, so it...
Financial advisors know too well that optimism can be a negative force especially when it is applied to planning for a client's medical care. People from all walks of life tend to think positively when it comes to assessing their own chances for...
Morgan Stanley brokers should expect a revolution when James Gorman takes the helm of the retail unit. Gorman made sweeping cutbacks and changes as head of retail at Merrill Lynch, and observers expect more of the same under new Morgan CEO John...
The rapper Notorious B.I.G. had it right: The more money we come across, the more problems we see. If planning for wealthy people is daunting, planning for the ultra-rich those with net worth in excess of $50 million is exponentially more involved...
In the wake of the Wall Street scandals of the past few years, it was inevitable that government regulators would take a look at how the self-regulatory organizations (SROs), such as the NYSE and the NASD, were doing their jobs. If the SROs were...
