LPL Financial LLC has scooped up four Merrill Lynch advisors in Federal Way, Washington who managed $425 million in advisory and brokerage assets, according to an announcement Wednesday.
The group includes Terri Conger, her son, Trevor Lubereski, along with Joseph Blackner and Jace Kasteler and calls their new practice Pacific Legacy Wealth Partners. They signed with LPL’s Strategic Wealth Services unit, a channel launched in 2020 to appeal to wirehouse breakaways by offering a package of additional support such as marketing and budgeting in exchange for a flat fee.
Lubereski said in a statement that the SWS channel “could help fill in the gap between being fully independent and an employee.”
The team, which joined LPL in April, moved along with client associates Judi Stanton and Jennifer Hamlyn.
A Merrill spokesperson did not return a request for comment, and the Pacific Legacy team did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An LPL spokesperson declined to comment on the team’s production.
The group opted for the independent broker-dealer route to gain “more control” and “function more as a fiduciary,” Blackner said in the announcement. “Since LPL doesn’t offer proprietary investment products, we can truly do what we think is best for our clients,” Blackner said.
Conger, who leads the team and serves as managing director of the new practice, started as a broker in 1994 with H.D. Vest Investment Securities, an independent broker-dealer now known as Avantax Wealth Management, according to BrokerCheck. She moved to Merrill in 2001, according to the database, and was ranked as #28 on Forbes’ best-in-state women advisors list this year.
Blackner and Kasteler both started their brokerage careers at Merrill in 2018. Lubereski started his career at Merrill in 2019, BrokerCheck shows.
The Merrill quartet’s move to LPL follows that of Chistopher J. Coffin, a Merrill lifer who oversaw $325 million and generated nearly $2 million in annual revenue. Coffin, based in Austin, Texas, joined LPL’s employee brokerage channel, Linsco, in mid-June.
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