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RIABiz

Articles published 12/2015


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Brooke Southall: My fake ordeals for this Christmas trip were the high airfares and limited flights that obliged me to fly into Manchester, N.H.

Missive from New England: The Mill Valley-to-Maine scenery change yields its annual payload of inspiration

My big financial challenge was buying Christmas gifts with more money than ideas

December 29, 2015 at 3:54 PM

The present tense will give way to a future that reveals how a series of big bets -- automated and human-populated -- play out.

What the collective unconscious of RIAs in 2015 revealed as crunched by RIABiz article readership

Those taking new and interesting risks, very much including the ones behind robo efforts, created the kind of drama that an advisor mind could appreciate

December 28, 2015 at 5:22 PM

Ryan Hughes:  I should’ve launched the firm in LA ...  but I was married with two small children and we both wanted to raise our children in San Diego.

20 months in: A field dispatch from an advisor who started an RIA in a strange city with no clients

After stints as a Beverly Hills broker for Merrill and a salesman for Schwab, the Navy veteran went deep into academia to learn his trade

December 23, 2015 at 7:49 PM

Reuven Avi-Yonah: Will the IRS be willing to take on many millions of investors or is Vanguard too big to tax?

Why Vanguard Group has proved impervious to a '$34.6 billion' whistleblower suit and why nobody's suggesting Vanguard execs should breathe easy

The SEC documented a 1981 OK on the asset manager's 'at-cost' fee structure - but if the IRS is egged on it could cost Vanguard bigtime in back taxes, penalties and future business

December 22, 2015 at 8:09 PM

In his newly created position, Chris Whiting aims to eliminate Balkanization for RIAs using Black Diamond.

In first major act as Black Diamond/Advent owner, SS&C Technologies hires operation chief of $14-billion RIA to fill new role

Chris Whiting left Moneta Group in September after big changes at that RIA to join the software company that did his firm's performance reporting

December 21, 2015 at 9:11 PM

Duane Thompson: Its harshest critics might compare the process to a giant anaconda that, having swallowed its prey, now lies motionless for several months as it slowly digests its meal.

Snakes and ladders: What to expect in the unexpectedly triumphant final DOL fiduciary rule

Whether converted or just plain exhausted, the staunchest opponents are standing down to make way for the new rule that will go into effect in 2017

December 18, 2015 at 12:28 AM

Rob Foregger: We believe is the lion's share of the assets will be won by the incumbents.

NextCapital raises $16 million as its founder goes where Financial Engines' 401(k) robo strategy didn't

Betting giant asset managers will carry the day, recovering co-founder of Personal Capital Rob Foregger seeks firms like Russell Investments, Alliance Bernstein as VC investors and as enterprise clients

December 17, 2015 at 7:17 PM

Valerie Brown was Donald Marron's ace in making a silk purse out of a Cetera.

Sources: Lightyear Capital is set to snap up AIG -- and perhaps install Valerie Brown as its leader

Heads of SagePoint, FSC, Royal Alliance and Woodbury are in New York, perhaps hashing out details of their new life under Donald Marron's private equity unit

December 16, 2015 at 2:28 AM

Bill Ruckelshaus: The company will be a one-stop shop for tax advisors.

Dissecting Blucora's giant act of financial engineering -- adding a broker-dealer to a software roll-up

M&A expert Bill Ruckelshaus' Bellevue company is paying $580 million for H.D. Vest, a crazy price by some measures but not if 5.5 million existing Blucora customers can be cross-sold

December 15, 2015 at 6:28 PM

The shindig opened with a salute to immortal Fontainebleau guests as RIAs themselves indulged in dreams of destiny.

MarketCounsel event opens window on race to first $100-billion RIA and why a new round of 'destruction,' 'blunder,' culture wars, tech disillusionment and SRO jockeying must play out

With hedged hyper-optimism, Marty Bicknell, Ron Carson, Mark Tibergien and Shirl Penney got real with Graham Thomas about mad egg-breaking enroute to the perfect RIA omelet

December 14, 2015 at 8:55 PM

Sources say that Bill Harris is testing the M&A market to appease directors.

Amid growth slowdown, Personal Capital lists with an investment bank but critics debate if it means 'blood in the water'

Bill Harris has done things his way until now but may hand over control to a giant for a $500 million payday

December 11, 2015 at 10:58 PM

Brian Hamburger: Compliance is an operational standard of care that as long as firms don’t drop below that, they will be successful.

How Brian Hamburger's Miami Beach confab served up compliance cocktails with Lithium chasers to manic RIAs

MarketCounsel Summit had trouble topping last year's Spitzer- Robbins- Cuban-extravaganza in Vegas, but dispensed a compliance-minded prescription to RIAs suffering from growth-spurt jitters

December 11, 2015 at 1:25 PM

Michael Kreps: The DOL is allowing states to set up automatic enrollment for IRAs without triggering ERISA rules. This is setting up an unfair advantages.

401(k) industry howls as DOL lets state governments become DC providers with advantageous exemptions

Multiple employer plans' under states will have economies of scale, fewer rules, while ERISA bars private firms from banding together

December 10, 2015 at 7:00 PM

Brooke Southall: RIA vendors are selling the wrong product, selling it in the wrong spirit or marketing it in the wrong way.

How vendors fail RIAs -- and themselves in the bargain -- by insulting RIA intelligence

Anything with a whiff of closed architecture, overcharging, inauthenticity, opacity or idiocy masquerading as information is a long-term credibility corrosive

December 9, 2015 at 12:42 AM

Susan Reese: I liked the model of the [Joe Piazza] has. It has transparency that's not associated with a large bank.

Why a $2 billion advisor bolted Goldman Sachs' $26 billion, Albany-based RIA and subtracted 12,000 commuting miles

After sandwiching a 20-year hiatus between GE and Goldman, Susan Reese continues her brilliant career at Joe Piazza's RIA startup in a quest for open architecture and closely held ownership

December 8, 2015 at 5:37 PM

Keith Girard: After enduring the Bankers Trust banking scandal, the firm was now facing something far more serious. This was a story.

How a picture overshadowed thousands of words in the coverage of the 1999 Alex. Brown-Deutsche Bank-Holocaust bombshell and how it resonates still

The author helped make The Daily Record but the Nazi graphics for an article about Jewish clients yanking funds ahead of the Nazi financier purchasing the local investment bank and wealth manager ended up blowing up

December 5, 2015 at 8:56 PM

Paul Reilly: Deutsche Bank is to continue providing the Alex. Brown advisors continued access to syndicates from Deutsche Bank's equity research and a high array of high-net-worth services for many years.

What to make of Raymond James putting 'Alex. Brown' back into business and what to make of the $420 million it's spending to make it happen

Raymond James could get the hallowed brand and 200 advisors with $50 billion in advised assets for a nominal price but it'll also be pumping Deutsche products through the AB unit

December 4, 2015 at 8:28 PM

Jed Horowitz: The guy who founded the publication is in jail but others are trying to put the pieces together.

How two well regarded biz-industry journos are rethinking post-Parish AdvisorHUB

Jed Horowitz and Mason Braswell see potential despite unusual circumstances

December 3, 2015 at 9:13 PM

Mike Schroepfer is the latest Facebook add to Wealthfront's squad.

Wealthfront takes on another Facebook vet -- a clue that going dark in Palo Alto doesn't mean going away

The last-standing pure B2C robo hopes to outwit, outlast, and outplay its competitors by out-hiring them

December 3, 2015 at 6:15 PM

Matthew Weibler: Commonwealth’s new CRM is shockingly fast.

Why Commonwealth Financial dumped Microsoft CRM and where the decision's go-it-alone hazards lie

At stake is what many consider the advisor nerve center of the Waltham, Mass.-based broker-dealer

December 2, 2015 at 4:58 AM

Matthew Papazian [l. w/Ross Fox, Sarah Keys, Dick Sisung and Marti Awad]: We had no intention of ever going after them.

What Merrill Lynch was able to strip away from breakaway RIA Cardan Capital and why the advisors made the 'tactical' decision to let go

These Denver-based advisors achieved a rarefied status at BoA's broker-dealer as money manager and wealth manager before deciding to bolt

December 1, 2015 at 7:46 PM

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