When E. Stanley O'Neal was promoted to CEO of Merrill Lynch in the summer of 2002, he aimed to change the perception among institutional investors that the firm even though it had 15,000 retail brokers worldwide was solely an expert in selling...

Back in 2006, the theme of our 16th Annual Broker Report Card Survey was: We Love Management. Our survey of about 920 advisors revealed mostly positive attitudes (of course, as usual, reps complained then, as they do now, about company support)...

What's in the water supply at Edward Jones? For the 16th consecutive year, the firm scored the highest overall approval rating (9.4) on our Annual Broker Report Cards survey. Ed Jones reps may be pooh-poohed in some precincts as small and...

The slogan may be, Citi never sleeps, but judging by this year's performance, Smith Barney reps might think Citi was napping on the job. This year, Smith Barney tied with Wachovia for third-to-last place with an overall score of 6.3, a sharp drop...

Financial advisors are, apparently, hungry for insurance: Two-thirds of registered reps plan to sell more life insurance products over the next two years. And most reps consider insurance an especially important part of an individual's financial...

Since the credit crisis began unfolding, many strange things have occurred in the fixed-income markets. Among the strangest has been the downturn of municipal bonds. High-grade municipals have long been considered reliable investments, but during...

The wobbly economy and plunging stock market might cause some of your clients to start thinking less about charitable giving and more about charitable receiving. But for those not lining up at the local soup kitchen, the motivation to give to...

Registered Rep.: How did your experience as an executive at Hewlett Packard as well as two technology startups help you when first launching your RIA? Bob Kresek: HP had a sales culture of striving to meet client needs and doing what is right for...

The Swiss firm's reputation for conservative financial savvy has been crushed, and the dour mood of the firm's U.S. FAs clearly reflects that. Since the credit crunch began last spring, UBS stock has dropped 75 percent on losses of more than $23...

The September meltdown in the financial markets, not surprisingly, undermined the confidence of many financial advisors, and their clients, in the Wall Street wirehouse firms. As the value of bad mortgage assets on wirehouse books plummeted, the...