Oct 15 (Reuters) – Dynasty Financial Partners, a wealth
management start-up that has expanded by attracting breakaway
veteran brokers, said on Monday it added a former Morgan Stanley
Wealth Management team that joined one of the firm’s existing
independent advisory practices in the Boston area.
Advisers Travis Tucker, Don Brusca and Stacy Bazylinski left
Morgan Stanley Wealth Management on Friday to join Risk Paradigm
Group LLC, an independent firm started last year by veteran
adviser David Gatti, who had also previously been at Morgan
Stanley.
“What it really came down to was taking ownership of our
business and being able to be involved in our business
day-to-day,” Tucker said in an interview about his team’s
decision to move.
The advisers were legacy Citigroup Smith Barney advisers who
joined Morgan Stanley Wealth Management after the merger of
Morgan Stanley’s wealth business with Citigroup’s
Smith Barney in 2009. They were based out of the firm’s Danvers,
Massachusetts office.
Brusca, a more than three-decade industry veteran, had also
previously worked at Merrill Lynch, according to regulatory
filings.
Tucker said he and his team chose to go independent with
Risk Paradigm in part because of their former connection with
Gatti, whom they knew during their Smith Barney days.
“We’re able to step right in with very little interruption
to our current business,” he said.
Risk Paradigm is one of the partnering firms at Dynasty,
which was founded in December 2010 by former Citigroup executive
Shirl Penney. The firm has expanded since then by partnering
with independent firms, like Risk Paradigm, and adding
independent adviser teams, like Tucker’s.
Dynasty bills itself as a firm that offers technological and
administrative support for advisers that want to go independent
but lack the backing of a big firm.
Risk Paradigm, which has offices in Austin, Boston and
Chicago, also added former UBS Wealth Management Americas
adviser Sam Kiefer to its team in February.
“We’ve been building a business that would allow advisers to
plug into an institutional buy-side boutique,” said Gatti, who
said he plans eventually to add other teams and advisers.
“Rather than a number of advisers in our business plan that we
have, it’s really the quality of the culture that we’re seeking
to preserve.”
