Edward Jones headcount, as of April 30 is 12,743, including financial advisors in both the United States and Canada. It had some $540 billion in client assets under management as of the end of April, as well.
This puts the broker-dealer, which employs its financial advisors, behind the three largest wirehouses (Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Merrill Lynch) in terms of the size of its advisor force — but ahead of independent giant LPL Financial.
"This is up from the 12,615 we had at beginning of the year," said Dan Timm, partner of branch development for the St. Louis-based broker-dealer, in a phone interview. "In 2009, we grew by about 800. Our design this year is to grow by about 1,100."
He acknowledges that this will be a tough target to meet.
Current numeric projections based on the first few months of the year, though, put the firm on track to hire 650 or so FAs.
However, Timm says, "… we may not be perfectly on pace, but we are in the ballpark."
The aggressive growth plans for 2010 were laid out in Edward Jones five-year 2008-2012 plan, which will be tweaked somewhat later this year.
