Sanctuary fired CEO Dickson over alleged conduct issue

Sanctuary Wealth, a fast-growing aggregator of registered investment advisors with $25 billion in assets and a focus on hiring wirehouse financial advisors, last month abruptly terminated its CEO, James R. Dickson, over allegations of conduct issues, according to Dickson’s BrokerCheck report.

The allegations cited in Dickson’s BrokerCheck report are not specific. Instead, the report states that Dickson “was terminated by the company’s board of managers after the board received information that evidenced that Mr. Dickson had not conducted himself in accordance with the requirements of his employment contract and his duties and obligations as CEO.”

Dickson was replaced on Feb. 2 by industry veteran and longtime Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc. senior executive Adam Malamed. At the time, there was no explanation for Dickson’s sudden departure from the firm, which he had led since 2018.

Industry standards give roughly a month for firms and employees to disclose reasons for terminations or firings in a process known as a Form U5.

In an email, Dickson’s attorney, Brian Hamburger, said that Dickson “has taken seriously his obligations to serve the interests of all stakeholders and vehemently denies any allegations to the contrary.”

“Like many entrepreneurs in the industry of late, he relinquished control to well-capitalized investors,” Hamburger wrote.

“On March 3, the firm filed a Form U5 with [the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc.] as part of this process,” a Sanctuary spokesperson wrote in an email. “We do not discuss former employees and the circumstances of their departure, nor can we provide additional information outside of what is in a regulatory filing.”

Sanctuary has two business lines its financial advisors can sit under: its broker-dealer, Sanctuary Securities Inc., and its RIA, Sanctuary Advisors, which lists $12 billion in client assets on its Form ADV.

Malamed, a member of the Sanctuary Wealth board of directors, is a 26-year veteran of the securities industry, and from 2006 to 2020 was executive vice president and chief operating officer at Ladenburg Thalmann. He was instrumental in building Ladenburg Thalmann into a network of 4,000 financial advisors at five broker-dealers by the time it was sold to Advisor Group in 2020, right on the cusp of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dickson was a 20-year veteran of Merrill Lynch before participating in the group that in 2018 bought a 110-year-old broker-dealer in Indianapolis, David A. Noyes & Co., and rechristened it as Sanctuary. The firm is owned by the Azimut Group, an Italian asset management company.