Think Advisor – Snowden Lane Picks Up $270M Merrill Duo

October 2014

This news follows the boutique firm’s recruiting of a UBS team in late September

Snowden Lane Partners, an independent broker-dealer and hybrid RIA, said Wednesday that a team has joined it from Bank of America-Merrill Lynch (BAC) in New York.
Jesse B. Clinton, CFP, and Phillip Pedrena formed the Clinton Pedrena Group, which will operate from Snowden Lane’s New York office; the two have roughly $270 million in combined client assets.
“Jesse and Phillip demonstrate the appeal of our partnership to an increasing number of high performing financial advisors,” said CEO and managing partner Rob Mooney, in a statement. “We are thrilled to be adding such a high-quality team to our head office.”
Mooney co-founded Snowden Lane in April 2012 with managing partner John Morris. The two executives, along with President Greg Franks and Chairman Lyle LaMothe, cut their teeth in the industry at Merrill Lynch. (LaMothe was the head of U.S. Wealth Management at Merrill from 2008 to 2011.)
Clinton and Pedrena “were as selective in their search as we were in ours, and pretty quickly into our discussions it became clear that this was a good match all around,” said LaMothe, in a statement shared with ThinkAdvisor. “The graying of the advisor channel has been well documented and it’s a legitimate concern in the industry, so the fact that they were looking for a place to call home for a long time and they chose us speaks to their confidence in our hybrid model and confidence that the Snowden brand will only continue to grow and expand.”
“Snowden Lane Partners has a high-touch, full-service model and unique culture that distinguishes it from many other firms,” said Clinton, in a press release. “It is simply a superior environment for our clients.”
“The firm’s integrated RIA and broker-dealer platform provides a very broad range of choices for our clients,” explained Pedrena in a statement.
Last month, Snowden Lane added a team of four advisors from UBS (UBS), which brought its advisor headcount to 15 and its assets under management to about $1.4 billion as of late-September.
At the time, Mooney said, the firm and its leadership “are not about being a Merrill Lynch lift-out, not at all. We all spent 20 to 30 years at Merrill Lynch, but many of the Merrill Lynch advisors are now dispersed at Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and UBS.”
 
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