And just as we suspected the recruiting wheel continues to turn and churn – with an interesting assist from the current events. A Morgan Stanley team left for Ameriprise in Madison, WI last Friday and took with them nearly $1.8M in annual revenue and better than $200M in client assets.
Ron Phelps founded the Phelps Hamus group at Morgan Stanley in 1996 and later added partner Jacob Hamus. Mr. Phelps is a Decorated Veteran of the United States Army and has even authored a children’s book, “The Stealth Dog”. Mr. Hamus started with Morgan Stanley as an intern in 2007 and became a full-time advisor in 2010. Together, with Senior Client Service Associate Wendy Campbell and Registered Client Service Associate Lyam Hunt – the team can claim better than 50 years of service in the world of wealth management.
It is unclear whether or not the Phelps Hamus Group chose the employee or independent channel at Ameriprise. The moment we have those details we will get them to you.
What is true and is of interest – given the timing of this move and the shutdown that exists across the country – they won’t be dealing with a TRO from Morgan Stanley anytime soon. With courts largely closed to anything but clear emergencies at this point the ability for Morgan Stanley attorneys to appear before a judge and be granted a TRO (based on the firms non-protocol status) is essentially zero.
As discussed at the end of one of our articles just yesterday, for advisors leaving non-protocol firms like Morgan Stanely, UBS, or J. P. Morgan the current legal climate works in their favor. Sure, the state of the markets and coronavirus itself are their own separate issues, but short-term this is a green light for some advisors.
