LPL makes major executive moves

In a significant move, LPL Financial LLC is moving its president and one of its old guard, Esther Stearns, out to head a new subsidiary and promoting a more recent executive hire, current chief financial officer Robert Moore, to replace her. According to a statement from the company on Wednesday, Mr. Moore will replace Ms. Stearns on May 1. He will also take over as the company's chief operating officer. “LPL financial has a tremendously deep and strong management team across the organization, and while Robert has been a terrific CFO, we are delighted that he will be taking on broader responsibilities as president and COO,” said LPL Financial CEO and chairman Mark Casady in a statement. Ms. Stearns, meanwhile, will become CEO of a new subsidiary, “LPL New Venture,” which will focus on registered reps and financial advisers new to the industry and dedicated to serving clients in the mass market, according to the company statement. It was not clear in the company statement the dollar amount of investable assets those “mass market” clients will control. Bill Dwyer, another long-term executive at LPL and currently president, national sales, is also seeing his responsibilities shifted at the firm. Along with his current duties, Mr. Dwyer will now be responsible for oversight of the firm's relationships with product sponsors, according to the company statement. Ms. Stearns has been with LPL since 1996, and has been a significant part of its transition from a privately held independent broker-dealer to a publicly traded company with a $4 billion market capitalization and close to 13,000 independent reps and financial advisers. Mr. Moore, meanwhile, joined LPL in 2008, three years after the firm was acquired by two private equity managers. Those managers, Hellman & Friedman and Texas Pacific Group, led LPL through several acquisitions of smaller broker-dealers, eventually doubling the number of LPL reps and advisers before its IPO in November 2010.