Schwab’s Goldman exits as RIA unit reorganizes

Charles Goldman, who has run the registered investment adviser business of The Charles Schwab Corp. for the past 18 months, has left the company, a spokeswoman said.

Charles Goldman, 47, executive vice president of Schwab Institutional, who has run the registered investment adviser business of The Charles Schwab Corp. for the past 18 months, has left the company, a spokeswoman said.
His departure was related to a reorganization announced today as the San Francisco-based company combines its RIA business with Schwab’s corporate benefit plan sponsors and third-party retirement plan record-keeping businesses, said spokeswoman Lindsay Tiles.
The newly combined institutional services division is being run by Jim McCool, a longtime associate of Schwab chief executive Walt Bettinger.
Mr. McCool had been running the corporate and retirement services unit.
Mr. McCool, 49, an executive vice president, joined Schwab in 1995, when the discount brokerage giant purchased The Hampton Co., a provider of corporate retirement plan services that was founded by Mr. Bettinger.
The company has not announced a day-to-day replacement for Mr. Goldman in the RIA business and has not announced whether or not other executives are changing jobs in the reshuffle.
Mr. Goldman and Mr. McCool were unavailable for comment.
The Schwab Institutional business run by Mr. Goldman is larger and faster-growing than those under Mr. McCool’s aegis.
Schwab has $542.1 billion of RIA customer assets under custody from about 5,500 independent advisers, compared with $210.5 billion in client assets from about 1.3 million corporate retirement plan accounts.
But Ms. Tiles said Schwab expects increased efficiency from combining the businesses, in part because many third-party administrator clients in retirement services are RIAs.
Mr. Goldman, a former consultant at Boston Consulting Group, rose quickly at Schwab.
He joined the company in 2001, became chief operating officers of the RIA unit in July 2004, and was elevated to president of the unit in May 2007 when his boss, Deborah D. McWhinney, took early retirement.
Mr. Goldman’s smiling face still graced the top of Schwab Institutional’s homepage at schwabinsitutional.com as of Monday afternoon ET, accompanied by a quote, “We are committed to backing independent advisors like you.”
While the business grew rapidly under Mr. Goldman, it also has been subject to some whiplash in the past year as credit and equities markets riled investors and advisers.
Last summer, for example, many advisers complained when Schwab made only selective offers to compensate investors who lost money in its mortgage securities-battered YieldPlus money market fund.
San Francisco-based Schwab also is closing a service that operated websites for advisers.
Access to some of those websites crashed for a few hours Oct. 10.