Joel Marks is in a race to get big before he gets crushed. Marks, vice chairman and COO of independent broker/dealer Advanced Equities in Atlanta, more than tripled the size of his independent advisor force with two acquisitions in the past year...
About a year-and-a-half ago, John Marshall surveyed his client roster and decided it was time to go after the really big bucks. The likeliest avenue, he figured, was gathering prospects through referrals from existing accounts. Marshall, an...
In the wake of the Terry Schiavo case and the death of Pope John Paul II many clients are focusing on end-of-life issues, particularly those surrounding life support and the final wishes of an incapacitated patient. Financial concerns, of course...
Say you meet up with a married couple in their mid 60s with three adult children and a net worth of $3 million $1.5 million in his IRA, $500,000 in their home and $1 million in nonretirement mutual funds. Since the husband is likely to die first...
Advisors of a certain age might remember an old Heineken beer ad campaign based around this phrase: Just being the best is enough. The idea, of course, being that the beer was so good it sold itself. A surprising number of advisors subscribe to a...
When Morgan Stanley and Dean Witter got married back in 1997, the idea was to create a Wall Street powerhouse: a white shoe investment bank (Morgan Stanley) with a nationwide, albeit work-a-day, distribution network (Dean Witter). That, at least...
Not-So-Hot IPO: The NASD fined San Francisco-based Thomas Weisel Partners $1.75 million for levying what the NASD deemed exorbitant commission charges on IPO shares. The firm sometimes charged commissions of more than $1 per share for attractive...
The mutual fund fees known as 12b-1s have morphed into something few envisioned when the SEC created them 25 years ago. With regulators now poised to address that transformation, many reps are sweating about the future of a reliable income stream...
Smith Barney is facing a new round of sex-discrimination suits. A quartet of financial consultants from California has filed a national class-action lawsuit against the firm in a San Francisco federal court. The suit alleges systemic sexual...
