$680M Team Jumps From Morgan Stanley to Stifel

By Ginger Szala

Career Moves July 17, 2020 at 03:04 PM

Share & Print

Stifel CEO Ronald Kruszewski. (Photo: Bloomberg)

Stifel Financial recently added four new advisors in North Carolina from Morgan Stanley, where they managed $680 in client assets. The news comes a month after Stifel recruited a $354 million team from Merrill in the Tar Heel State.

The ex-Morgan Stanley team, which does business as the Founders Group, is based in Chapel Hill and include Michael Berard, Richard Dworsky, Frank Dworsky and David Omar.

"Following extensive due diligence, our group decided that Stifel offered the client-centric approach and platform more consistent with our team's focus on fundamental planning and investing," according to Berard, who has been in the business for 28 years and was with Morgan Stanley since 2007.

Over the summer, Stifel also recruited six advisors in from Wells Fargo Advisors with a total of about $540 million in assets; the reps work in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Montana.

The St. Louis-based broker-dealer also added four Merrill advisors working in Venice, Florida, with some $935 million in assets, from earlier this year .

Stifel had net revenues of $3.3 billion in 2019, an increase of 10.3% compared with 2018. It has more than 2,200 advisors.

Related on ThinkAdvisor: