Pershing snags Tibergien as chief of advisory unit

In a marketing and business coup, Pershing LLC has hired Mark Tibergien, a leading consultant in the financial advice industry. He will join Jersey City, N.J.-based Pershing on Oct. 1 as chief executive of Pershing Advisor Solutions LLC and will serve on the company’s executive committee. Mr. Tibergien has spent the past 13 years at Moss Adams LLP of Seattle, where he is the partner in charge of the business consulting and business valuation groups, as well as chairman of the financial services group. During the course of his career, which began in 1973, Mr. Tibergien has worked closely with hundreds of registered investment advisers, broker-dealers, money managers, insurance companies and other financial services firms. He was president of Management Advisory Services Inc. prior to its merger with Moss Adams in 1994.
Mr. Tibergien will report to Richard Brueckner, chairman and chief executive of Pershing, and Brian Shea, the firm’s president and chief operating officer. Pershing is the largest clearing firm, with 870 broker-dealer clients. In 2005, the firm changed the name of the business group that focuses on advisers to Pershing Advisor Solutions from Pershing Investment Manager Services. Mr. Tibergien said Thursday that he plans to build Pershing’s advisory business by recruiting executive talent and adding more clients. “We want to grow it, no doubt about it,” he said. “This is clearly an organization that allows for an entrepreneurial spirit, and it’s willing to innovate.” Pershing’s Registered Investment Adviser business has $73 billion under administration. Taking stock Mr. Tibergien said his first step at Pershing will be to take stock of the organization. “There’s been good growth under its current leadership,” he said, noting that the advisory group has about 140 employees, up from 40 three years ago. Mr. Tibergien said that the “big issues” will be to focus on the firm’s “client-centric orientation, meet with clients and meet with people we’d like to have as clients.” According to Philip Palaveev, senior consultant at Moss Adams, Mr. Tibergien was responsible for building the consulting business that focused on financial advice for the consulting firm. “He’s going to a client, so we’re happy,” said Mr. Palaveev, who stressed that he and Rebecca Pomering, a Moss Adams principal, still will be active in the industry.“It’s an opportunity to do a number of new and exciting things,” he said. Mr. Palaveev will become a partner at Moss Adams on Oct. 1. “It’s the end of a chapter, and a great chapter, but it’s not the end of the book,” he said. “There’s other people here than Mark, but he was our mentor for a long time.” One head of a broker-dealer network said he was pleased that Mr. Tibergien is joining Pershing. “I think Mark knows our business very well,” said John Simmers, chief executive of ING Advisors Network Inc. of Atlanta. The ING broker-dealers that clear with Pershing are Financial Network Investment Corp. of El Segundo, Calif., ING Financial Partners Inc. of Des Moines, Iowa, and Multi-Financial Securities Corp. of Denver. Investment professionals who are “dually registered” as reps and advisers fit well into the Pershing platform, Mr. Simmers said. For example, the ING Advisors Network firms are moving $600 million in assets from a custodian, he said. “[Mr. Tibergien’s] a very big name,” said Eric Schwartz, chief executive of Cambridge Investment Research of Fairfield, Iowa, which uses Pershing and National Financial Services LLC of Boston as clearing firms. “And Pershing’s [Pershing Advisor Solutions] has almost suffered from being almost unknown.” It was “extremely rare” for reps and advisers to mention Pershing as a firm to custody advisory assets, Mr. Schwartz said. Most advisers concentrate on the “big three”: Schwab Institutional of San Francisco, the Fidelity Registered Investment Advisor Group of Boston and TD Ameritrade Institutional of Jersey City, N.J. Hiring Mr. Tibergien “could be a very good public relations move,” Mr. Schwartz said.