LPL Financial added a former Morgan Stanley team that oversaw $650 million in assets in Bellevue, Washington, according to an announcement on Monday.
The team is led by Mark D. Allison and Mark T. Eberle who each have almost four decades of experience and had joined Morgan Stanley through its 2008 purchase of Citigroup’s Smith Barney. The group also includes advisor Matt C. Tabler and four client associates, according to the announcement.
They joined LPL’s Strategic Wealth Services channel on July 25 and are calling their practice Pinnacle Private Wealth Advisors, according to registration records and the announcement.
Eberle said the team began looking at other firms because they wanted more help running their practice than they could get at a wirehouse. LPL’s SWS channel, which launched in 2020, offers a package of support, including marketing, real estate and budgeting specialists, in exchange for a flat fee.
“We realized that we needed a lot more client service as our practice has grown so dramatically,” Eberle said in an interview. “We have always worked for our clients, and it had become increasingly obvious that the firm that we left believed that we worked for them.”
Eberle declined to comment on the team’s annual revenue. A Morgan Stanley spokesperson also declined to comment.
Morgan Stanley executives have touted that the firm has been net positive in recruiting as it is holding onto more of its larger teams, and its own stepped-up hiring has contributed to its net new asset growth.
Indeed, LPL Financial CEO Dan Arnold said last week that hiring from wirehouses has slowed, although LPL also last week added a Merrill team managing $425 million to its SWS channel in nearby Federal Way, Washington.
Already the largest independent broker-dealer, the San Diego-based firm added a net 421 advisors for the second quarter, bringing headcount up 2% sequentially to 21,942. (Morgan Stanley, like its wirehouse peers, no longer reports broker headcount but last had around 15,000.)
LPL’s Strategic Wealth Services channel works with 76 advisors in 17 states, according to the firm’s website.
Eberle started his brokerage career in 1983 at American Express Inc. but left after less than a year for Morgan Stanley predecessor Shearson Lehman Hutton Inc. He was ranked #23 on Forbes’ best-in-state wealth managers list in 2019, which listed his assets under management at $260 million at the time.
Allison started his career in 1984 at Dain, Bosworth Inc. and worked at Merrill Lynch before joining a Morgan Stanley Smith Barney predecessor in 1988, according to BrokerCheck.
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