San Antonio Business Journal – New York investment firm with international reach opens SA office, hiring advisers

April 2017

Kristen Mosbrucker – April 27, 2017
Snowden Lane Partners, a New York-based investment firm opened its first Texas office in San Antonio, the company announced.
The firm recruited two local Merrill Lynch executives to run the new office inside the Rogers Ranch Park Office Building in North Central San Antonio near Stone Oak. The location is temporary, though; the firm will seek new offices as it hires investment advisers in the coming months, according to the firm.
Larry Barocas — former senior vice president at Merrill Lynch, a subsidiary of Bank of America Corp. — and Debbie Ury, former vice president and relationship manager at Merrill Lynch, are leading Snowden Lane Partners’ San Antonio office inside its strategic management group.
Barocas has worked in China, Costa Rica, Spain and Switzerland during his career. He was senior vice president for wealth management and an international wealth management adviser in San Antonio. His tenure at Merrill Lynch began in 2009, and he’s been a financial adviser for more than 20 years. He’s also been a tax attorney with a specialization in cross-border mergers and acquisitions.
Ury is a native of Chicago who has worked for Merrill since 1981. Her focus is long-term financial planning for high-net worth individuals.
Management described the San Antonio region in a statement as a “critical market for the firm’s future.”
Snowden Lane Partners, founded in 2011, has about 1,300 clients, and roughly 4 percent of its clients were not residents of the U.S. in 2016, according to documents on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Up to 50 percent of the company’s clients are individuals who are not considered accredited investors, and up to 75 percent have high net worth. The company makes money on the percentage of assets under management and fixed fees.
Overall, the company had $854 million in discretionary assets under management across 2,298 accounts and nearly $467 million across 648 client accounts.
Rob Mooney, CEO of Snowden Lane Partners, worked at Merrill Lynch for 22 years himself. Mooney announced plans to hire more advisers at the San Antonio office throughout 2017.
In recent years, Merrill Lynch advisers have been incentivized to make more client referrals for Bank of America as an effort to cross-sell customers. Snowden Lane has been recruiting from bigger players like Merrill Lynch and Wells Fargo & Co. for years.
It began its non-U.S. resident client business in December 2015, with the base of those operations and advisers located in San Diego.
San Antonio is where Merrill Lynch has its global wealth management office.
Snowden Lane Partners has eight other offices across the country, including San Diego and Pasadena, California; New Haven, Connecticut; Pittsburgh; and Baltimore, Salisbury and Bethesda, Maryland.