Displaying items by tag: merrill lynch

Recruiters and broker-dealer executives are gearing up for one final recruiting push this year before FINRA’s annual pause in registration. Brokers who want to change firms must move before December 22nd. That date is when FINRA halts its registration systems to generate year-end renewal statements. New registration requests for license requests and terminations will stop at 11 p.m. ET on the 22nd and then resume again on January 3rd. In anticipation of the pause, many wirehouse firms have already made plans to transfer licenses well ahead of the December 22nd deadline. For instance, Merrill Lynch set December 7th as its cut-off to prevent any foreseen registration issues. In other words, advisors don't want to be in a situation where have notified their old firms that they’re leaving but are unable to transfer accounts to their new firm. Also adding to the pause in recruiting in December is the preference of advisors to wait until the new year to change firms.

Finsum:Advisor recruiting is expected to temporarily cool down in December ahead of FINRA’s pause in registration on December 22nd. 

Merrill Lynch scooped up a four-person Citi Private Bank team that manages $1 billion in client assets. The team, which is based in Connecticut and New York is led by Frank A. Falco, who will be based out of Merrill’s Great Neck office on Long Island. The rest of the team includes Kevin C. Condon, John R. Huber, and Alexandra Maksimow, who will be based out of its Stamford, Connecticut office. Members of the team joined Merrill Lynch on a staggered schedule over the past couple of months after serving out their garden leave terms. Falco spent 22 of his 25 years in the industry with Citi. He started his career at Gaines, Berland Inc. in 1997. Condon had been with Citi for the previous seven years and started his career in 1992 as a portfolio manager with U.S. Trust. Huber had been with Citi since 2007 and started in the business at Prime Capital Services in 2005. Maksimow began her Citi career in 2012 as a credit analyst in the commercial bank before switching to the private bank in 2016. The move is noteworthy since the team is coming from the private banking channel and not the wealth management channel. However, Merrill has occasionally pulled in other salaried private bankers in recent years despite its freeze on veteran broker recruiting since 2017.

Finsum:Merrill Lynch nabbed a $1 billion team from Citi Private Bank despite its freeze on veteran broker recruiting. 

Joe Curtin, head of portfolio management at Merrill Lynch’s Chief Investment Office said there is increased interest from financial advisors in adopting model portfolios. Merrill is an industry leader in MP development, and they have seen AUM pull through almost triple since 2015 in this area. Part of what’s driving the interest is thematic investing within model portfolios. Risk and return are priority concerns with thematic blankets like ESG, demographics, and big data that align with investors' interests. Merrill is planning on launching more portfolios in the future with thematic focuses. Currently, they manage 147 portfolios with around $200 billion in wealth.

FINSUM: MPs are seeing wide adoptions because of their ability to easily tackle themes that 21st-century investors want in their portfolios.

(New York)

Bank of America just put out a big warning that advisors need to pay attention to. The bank is warning that earnings growth could get “vaporized” across a couple of sectors. The reason why is tax hikes. BofA's Savita Subramanian posits that in a scenario where taxes rise to 25% next year (from 21% this year), 5% would be wiped off earnings growth, a huge margin in a year that is already set up to see some cooling after the red hot earnings growth of 2021.

FINSUM: Investors don’t seem to be adequately accounting for this risk. Despite the fact that Biden’s proposals will likely get watered down, there appears a high likelihood that taxes will rise next year.

(New York)

Morningstar has added a lot of coverage to their model portfolio universe this year. Earlier in 2021 they expanded their coverage of ratings to 1500 model portfolios, an increase of 50%. Of all those funds reported on, only two of them took home their coveted gold rating: the Vanguard CORE series and the BlackRock Target Allocation ETF. Vanguard was noted as having highly diversified index funds and rarely making portfolio changes. Other funds that got acclaim, such as their silver rating, include American Funds Growth & Income and the American Funds Tax Aware Growth & Income series.

FINSUM: The world of model portfolios has grown nearly as dizzying as that of ETFs so these Morningstar guides are a big help.