Morgan Stanley Attracts Seven Advisors from Rivals

On the West Coast, Benjamin Woo joined MSSB from Charles Schwab. The San Francisco-based broker has yearly commissions and fees of $1.4 million and about $140 million in assets.

He had been with Schwab for more than eight years and now reports to MSSB's Marin complex manager David Jernigan.

Morgan Stanley is the largest wirehouse brokerage in terms of advisors, with 18,140 in the first quarter vs. 15,119 for Wells Fargo Advisors and 15,005 for Merrill Lynch.

Morgan Stanley also tops the charts in terms of assets under management in its wealth-management unit with $1.5 trillion vs. $1.45 trillion for Merrill.

However, in terms of average assets per advisor, Merrill stands at about $97 million per FA vs. Morgan Stanley with $88 million. UBS, with roughly 6,900 FAs in the Americas and $690 billion in assets in the region, reports that its advisors have about $100 million on average (after converting assets from Swiss francs, its reporting currency, to U.S. dollars).