Snowden Lane Partners has announced that Sam DeGennaro, former first vice president of Merrill Lynch, will serve as partner and managing director in the firm’s New Haven, Connecticut, office.
DeGennaro's addition to the Guth/Fordyce Group, led by managing directors Kevin Guth and Steve Fordyce, brings that practice past the $1 billion in client assets threshold.
Snowden Lane has now recruited two senior-level Merrill Lynch advisors in the past three months, adding a combined $280 million in client assets to the firm’s $2.5 billion in total client assets.
In May, Snowden Lane recruited another Merrill executive, Joseph Hubbell, former managing director of wealth management for the wirehouse. Hubbell merged his practice, which managed $100 million in assets, with the Clinton-Pedrena Group in New York City to form the Veritas Private Wealth Group, led by directors and managing partners Hubbell, Jesse Clinton and Phil Pedrena.
Five years ago, four long-time Merrill wealth management executives founded Snowden Lane as a hybrid broker/dealer RIA. And many other institutional advisors have since followed them, contributing to the rapid growth of the firm.
In the past year alone, Snowden Lane has enticed advisors from Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch to jump ship, even pulling in a $200 million Merrill team last December.
“Snowden Lane has quickly established itself in the wealth advisory marketplace as a trusted and reliable firm, combining the flexibility and independent thinking of a boutique with the infrastructure, leadership and capabilities of a much larger institution,” DeGennaro said.
Rob Mooney, Snowden Lane’s managing partner and CEO, attributes his firm’s success in recruiting top advisors to this type of environment. “We’re confident it will continue to attract the best talent, and enable us to offer superior investment solutions and services to our clients.”
