Andy Sieg, who has served as head of Merrill Lynch Wealth Administration for the final six years, is leaving the wirehouse, Financial institution of America introduced Thursday afternoon. Sieg will be a part of Citigroup later this yr to run its wealth administration division, reporting to CEO Jane Fraser, in response to Bloomberg.
BofA has named Lindsay Hans and Eric Schimpf to switch Sieg as presidents and co-heads of Merrill, reporting to Financial institution of America Chair and CEO Brian Moynihan.
In its announcement, BofA gave no purpose for Sieg’s departure, saying he led “the enterprise by way of a interval of sustained development and modernization of expertise for advisors and shoppers.”
There’s been some latest shakeup in Merrill’s govt management, with Hans lately being appointed to steer Non-public Wealth Administration, succeeding Don Plaus, who introduced his retirement after 32 years on the agency.
Most lately, Schimpf, who began at Merrill in 1994 as a monetary advisor, was serving as a division govt for the Pacific Coast and co-head of the enterprise advisor improvement program.
Collectively, Hans and Schimpf will oversee Merrill’s 25,000 workers and $2.8 trillion in shopper belongings.
The personnel shifts come after Merrill Wealth reported it boosted its advisor head depend yr over yr throughout all of its wealth administration companies, in response to its This autumn 2022 earnings report. In the course of the earnings name in January, Sieg predicted the agency would proceed to see 3% to 4% common advisor development per yr over the subsequent decade.
Merrill has gone by way of vital change over the past a number of years, from being acquired by Financial institution of America in the course of the 2008 monetary disaster to pumping the brakes on recruiting skilled advisors.
The agency returned to recruiting veteran advisors, though Sieg mentioned he wouldn’t get into bidding wars and chase advisors being wooed by outsize recruitment packages from rivals.
Sieg began out in public coverage in Washington, D.C., becoming a member of Merrill in 1992. Within the late Nineteen Nineties, he served as assistant to Merrill’s then-CEO Dave Komansky.
“My older brother labored at Merrill Lynch, and the then-CEO was a good friend of my father’s and our households, coincidentally by way of Penn State—Invoice Schreyer,” Sieg mentioned in a latest interview on Mindy Diamond’s podcast. “So I felt a connection to Merrill, and I used to be additionally fascinated and all the time have been by markets. There’s no higher place to be concerned in monetary markets and the sensible aspect of economics than to affix Merrill Lynch.”
From 2005 to 2009, Sieg served as a senior wealth administration govt at Citigroup after which returned to Merrill in 2009, after its acquisition by BofA.
Sieg returns to Citi with a mandate to construct up the financial institution’s U.S. wealth administration division, a enterprise that Fraser has mentioned is strategically necessary for the agency. Two years in the past, the financial institution restructured its wealth unit, combining the high-net-worth non-public financial institution with advisory companies for much less prosperous shoppers.