PRIMEDIA’S REGISTERED REP. MAGAZINE RANKS AMERICA’S TOP BROKERS
The First Annual Listing of The Best Brokers in America Includes 17 With Assets Under Management Over $1 Billion
New York - September 24, 2002 – PRIMEDIA’s Registered Rep., the leading source of information for investment professionals, announced today its first annual listing of The Best Brokers in America. While these top brokers, with assets under management of $400 million to $10 billion, share no common formula for achieving success, they have built books with an average size of nearly $1.5 billion and more than $50 billion in aggregate assets. Although the top broker was Lehman Brothers’ Martin Shafiroff, Merrill Lynch led the pack with sixteen brokers, followed by Salomon Smith Barney’s nine brokers and Prudential’s three.
To select America’s leading brokers Registered Rep. and R.J. Shook, author of The Winner’s Circle, scoured the country, interviewing scores of financial advisors and top executives at more than 50 brokerage houses. Mr. Shook created a list of reps by production and then ranked each one on additional criteria, including acceptable compliance records, total assets under management, client satisfaction and community involvement. To further ensure the integrity of the ranking, the results were vetted by a panel of advisors, all of whom are industry veterans.
“The brokers and advisors that made our list differ extensively in their backgrounds and areas of expertise,” said David Geracioti, editor-in-chief of PRIMEDIA’s Registered Rep. magazine. “And they also got to the top of the industry by pursuing different strategies. The one thing they do share, however, is an area of expertise. That and, of course, they all are sophisticated in their understanding of financial issues.”
The top 45 brokers are profiled in the September issue of PRIMEDIA’s Registered Rep. magazine. A special feature is devoted to five brokers that were selected based on their own individual stories. They include:
- Martin Shafiroff, 64 – Lehman Brothers, New York, NY – With $10 billion in assets under management, Shafiroff is the nation’s biggest-producing financial advisor and has led the industry in total revenue for decades (He ranks at number one this year.) He focused his practice on serving senior corporate executives of some of the largest companies in the world.
- Ira Walker, 46 – Morgan Stanley, Red Bank, NJ – One of Morgan Stanley’s most watched advisors, with $800 million in client assets. Since September 11, Walker has opened many new accounts with an average account size of $5 million and many up to $100 million (He ranks number six on the list.)
- Augie Cenname, 60 – Merrill Lynch, Columbus, OH– With $3 billion under management, Cenname’s team of 16 focus on multigenerational relationships, actively pursuing associations with three or four generations of a single family (#7).
- John Cooke, 62 – Prudential Financial, Indianapolis– With managed money representing a majority of Cooke’s $800 million under management, the Cooke Financial Group (of Prudential) is among the most successful teams in the industry (#18).
- John Rafal, 52 – Raymond James Financial Services, Essex, CT– With $1.2 billion in assets under management, Rafal believes that no client is too small. He offers clients the option of paying on either a fee-based or transaction basis and has no minimum requirement (#27).
The September issue of PRIMEDIA’s Registered Rep magazine is currently available and additional information about the 2002 Best Brokers in America can be found at www.registeredrep.com.
About PRIMEDIA’s Registered Rep. magazine
Registered Rep. is the preferred magazine of retail investment professionals. Each monthly issue reaches approximately 92,000 loyal subscribers who control trillions of dollars of assets for more than 30 million investors. These powerful financial advisers are licensed to sell a broad range of investment products and rely on Registered Rep.'s rich portfolio of timely features, articles, departments and columns. Registered Rep. is part of PRIMEDIA's Financial Services group that also includes Trusts & Estates, National Real Estate Investor and Shopping Center World. These are among the 90 PRIMEDIA Business Magazines and part of PRIMEDIA (NYSE: PRM), the world's largest targeted media company. More information about Registered Rep. can be found at www.registeredrep.com.
About PRIMEDIA
PRIMEDIA is the new tradition in media. With 2001 sales of $1.6 billion from a unique combination of traditional and new media properties, it is the leading targeted content and integrated marketing solutions company in both the consumer and business-to-business sectors. The Company is the #1 special interest magazine publisher in the U.S., with more than 250 titles such as Seventeen, Automobile, Motor Trend, New York, Fly Fisherman, American Baby, Telephony and American Demographics; the #1 producer and distributor of specialty video with 18 satellite and digital video product lines, including Channel One Network; and the #1 news and information group on the Internet, led by About.com. PRIMEDIA's stock symbol is: NYSE: PRM. More information about the Company can be found at www.primedia.com.
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