Steward Nabs $600M Wells Fargo Team
The five-person team is coming on board via Steward Partners' affiliate option rather than via an employee partnership.
Steward Partners Global Advisory, which is affiliated with Raymond James Financial Services, says Ramapo Wealth Advisors of Ramsey, New Jersey, has joined it from Wells Fargo.
The five-person team works with $600 million in client assets and includes advisors James Sahagian, CFP, Peter T. Gordinier and David Puccia.
“I feel like I’m coming full circle by joining Steward Partners,” said James Sahagian, in a statement. “When I joined Smith Barney as a rookie advisor in 1999, Jim Gold, Steward’s CEO, was one of my trainers. I have the utmost respect for him and the great business that he and the team here have built. We are all extremely happy to be a part of it.”
Sahagian became an advisor in 1999 at Smith Barney and moved to Wells Fargo in 2009, while Gordinier has worked in the industry for over 35 years and has been a financial advisor for more than 25 years. Puccia worked for Wells Fargo and its legacy banks since 1979.
“The Ramapo Wealth Advisors team represents the kind of committed, client-centric advisors that have helped Steward Partners grow so large, so quickly,” according to Michael Drumm, divisional president of New York Tri-State for Steward Partners.
The group is coming on board via Steward’s affiliate option rather than via an employee partnership and “still [has] access to all of our technology, our full platform of services as well as equity in the parent company,” Drumm explained.
“My partners and I decided to form an independent firm because this business model allows us to do so much more for our clients. We spent a couple of years on our due diligence before we chose to join Steward Partners,” said Sahagian, in a statement.
“By partnering with Steward, we are aligning ourselves with a forward-thinking independent firm that offers superior technology, a multi-custodial platform, and the potential to offer different solutions that were not previously available to us,” he added.
Also moving to Steward recently from Wells Fargo is Michael Englehart, who has 37 years of industry experience. With Englehart’s Bel Air, Maryland, office joining Steward, the firm’s network now has 30 branches in 16 states and the District of Columbia.
As of Dec. 31, total client assets for Steward Partners were $27 billion.
(Shown in photo: David Puccia (standing, left), James Sahagian, Peter Gordinier, Yanbin Lin-Sim (seated, left) and Maral Sahagian.)