The brokers, Sam Gross, Joe Brady and Tonya
Rasmussen, started on Jan. 16 at Raymond James's Chicago office,
a few blocks north of William Blair's headquarters where they
managed $524 million in client assets, generating $2 million in
revenues last year.
The group, which catered to clients with typically $1 million to
$5 million in investable assets, moved to Raymond James because
its scale allows them to focus on their specialties, Gross said.
William Blair is a boutique financial services firm with around
80 financial advisers in its private wealth management division,
Gross said, compared with Raymond James's roughly 1,600
advisers.
Gross, 52, is a portfolio manager with 30 years experience in
equity markets who started his career at Legg Mason. Brady, 73,
is a fixed-income expert with about 37 years of experience
starting at Dean Witter & Co. Rasmussen, 36, is a financial
adviser who started with William Blair in 2004.
Raymond James had a banner year for recruiting in 2014, and one
of the firm's top hires in Chicago, Michael and Benjamin Cohen,
hold the office next door to Gross, Brady and Rasmussen.
The Cohens, a father-and-son team, joined Raymond James in
February 2014 from J.P. Morgan Securities, where they had
managed about $670 million in client assets, generating annual
fees and commissions in excess of $4.2 million.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Dilts; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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