Latest defection: $1.4B Merrill team jumps to HighTower

Fourth big signing for firm this year; 'a great mousetrap'

A team of three New York-based financial advisers from Merrill Lynch Private Banking and Investment Group has joined HighTower Advisors LLC.

Kenneth Hoffman, Richard Steinberg and Jordan Waxman managed more than $1.4 billion for approximately 50 institutional and high-net-worth family clients in Merrill’s private banking division. The team is the fourth major signing by HighTower this year, and brings the cumulative increase in assets under management for the firm to as much as $5 billion, depending on how many of the team’s clients make the transition to HighTower.

The signing of the team, which will operate under the name of HSW Advisors, gives HighTower three of the 10 largest adviser recruiting deals tracked by InvestmentNews so far in 2012. (See 2012’s top 10 Advisers on the Move here). Two have come from Merrill Lynch and the other — James Pupillo — joined the firm from Morgan Stanley’s high-end Greystone Consulting Group.

“We’re pleased with our success so far this year, and we think this is the tip of the iceberg in terms of wirehouse teams leaving their firms,” said Mike Papedis, executive vice president of business development at HighTower. “We have a deep pipeline and we look forward to doing more transactions in 2012.”

“Hightower has a great mousetrap. They have a good platform and good product offerings, and they have an organization that’s attractive to advisers,” said Danny Sarch, president of recruiting firm Leitner Sarch Consultants Ltd. “The story becomes more compelling every time another big team joins them.”

Merrill Lynch Wealth Management spokeswoman Selena Morris confirmed the departure of the three-man team.

Mr. Waxman said his group had explored its options for 16 months before settling on HighTower.
“We considered everything from the large commercial banks down to hanging out our own shingle, and we concluded that we had to be RIAs independent of any platform,” he said. “If we want to access Goldman Sachs hedge funds and UBS [AG] commodity funds and Merrill Lynch long equity managers, there’s no way to do it if we’re inside one of those firms. The capital markets desk at HighTower allows us to do that. We want to be unconflicted and unobstructed in what we do for our clients.”

Mr. Steinberg and Mr. Waxman joined Merrill’s private banking group from The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in 2002. Mr. Hoffman worked at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. for ten years before joining Merrill Lynch in 1995. He has been a Barron’s Top 1000 Adviser.

HighTower, a private firm, does not publicly disclose financial information, but Mr. Papadis said the firm now has over $20 billion in assets under management.