Stifel has been a recruiting dynamo for the past three years. The culture, leadership, and comp offered at the ‘super regional’ has resonated with wirehouse advisors seeking friendly confines. Based on the annual NNA (net new assets) recorded by the firm the message has more than resonated.
Beyond executive leadership at the firm (CEO Ron Kruszewski and others) the key to the recruiting resurgence at the firm was John Pierce, now former National Director of Recruiting. He was tasked to build out the national branch manager led architecture that would allow Stifel to create the recruiting success it did.
And yet…
On Monday John Pierce was dismissed from the firm. We’ve yet to track down the specifics (calls to John Pierce went directly to voicemail) of why this has occurred. Stifel’s recruiting success, as we mentioned in a previous article (an article in which we did not speak to Mr. Pierce, rather we simply noted the obvious success by the numbers), seemed to be obvious. So why the abrupt dismissal?
That has yet to be established, but we expect to hear from industry insiders at some point as to what happened. As we searched for information we were able to establish that Mr. Pierce continues to reside in Philadelphia and recently purchased a home in Juno, Florida. That’s it.
A few other questions that remain after Mr. Pierce’s dismissal: Who replaces him at Stifel? Will Stifel’s recruiting momentum continue? Given it’s a long weekend this weekend, does this news disrupt the transfer of probable teams scheduled to move to Stifel?
These questions currently remain a mystery; in fact the whole episode is a mystery. Stay tuned for more details as we receive them.
