(Reuters) – Wells Fargo & Co expanded its broker force in Arkansas, adding a team of veteran advisers from rival firm Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.
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Advisers Wade Meeks and Curtis Coburn moved to Wells on Friday from Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, where they managed $127 million in client assets. They joined Wells Fargo Advisors, the brokerage unit owned by San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co.
Both Meeks and Coburn were legacy Citigroup Smith Barney advisers who joined Morgan Stanley Smith Barney after the merger of Citi’s Smith Barney with Morgan Stanley’s wealth unit in 2009.
Meeks, a more than 15-year industry veteran, had been with Citigroup for more than a decade, according to regulatory filings. Coburn, who has been in the industry for nearly four decades, previously worked at Lehman Brothers and Salomon Smith Barney.
Meeks and Coburn remain based out of Little Rock, Arkansas, where they also previously worked with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.
The advisers joined Wells’ private client group, the biggest division within the company’s St. Louis-based brokerage business, which has more than 15,000 advisers with $1.2 trillion in client assets among its brokerage subsidiaries.
Wells also has a broker-dealer unit for independent advisers and a separate division of advisers who work in bank branches.
So far this year, Wells has added at least 99 veteran advisers who managed roughly $11.3 billion in client assets at their old firms, based on moves tracked by Reuters.
Reuters tracks the moves of individual advisers or teams that manage about $100 million or more in client assets, which typically translates to $1 million or more in annual production.
(Editing by Dave Zimmerman)