Yet another CEO parts ways with the Pacific Select Group

NEW YORK — Yet another chief executive of a Pacific Select Group LLC broker-dealer is leaving his respective firm, making for a near-complete overhaul in top management of the four broker-dealers in the Pacific Select network.
Select reps with Mutual Service Corp. were first told this month at a meeting of the firm’s 50 biggest producers that John Poff, the company’s chief executive and president, is stepping down at the end of February.
The company announced Mr. Poff’s retirement Thursday.
John Dixon, MSC’s chairman, who some in the industry believe is close to retiring, will step into Mr. Poff’s role at MSC. Mr. Dixon also is president of Pacific Select Group, which is based in Newport Beach, Calif.
At the meeting, he told the reps that parent Pacific Life Insurance Co. is likely to sell the four Pacific Select broker-dealers, but he didn’t give a specific date, industry sources said.
One adviser affiliated with MSC, who attended the meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz., hopes such a deal is done sooner rather than later.
“Pacific Life doesn’t want to own the companies anymore. It’s pretty obvious,” said the adviser, who asked not to be identified. “We were told they were going to know something shortly.”
A potential deal to sell the Pacific Select broker-dealer network has been one of the hottest topics currently in the independent-contractor broker-dealer industry.
“They have a lot of reasons for making it happen shortly,” including the fact that some reps may become alienated, the adviser said.
“It’s been tough on the field force,” the adviser said. “It’s a bad situation to work for someone who doesn’t want to own you.”
The adviser added: “I think it was the perfect time for him to resign.”
Mr. Poff, a 22-year veteran of MSC, has worked at the highest levels of the independent-contractor-brokerage industry, serving as a member of the board of directors for the Financial Services Institute Inc. of Atlanta since 2004, when the organization was founded. In 2006, Mr. Poff was chairman of the FSI.
Mr. Poff, 59, is to remain with the firm through the rest of the year in an “advisory capacity,” MSC said Thursday in a statement.
Along with MSC of West Palm Beach, Fla., the broker-dealers in the network are Associated Securities Corp. in Los Angeles, United Planners’ Financial Services of America in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Waterstone Financial Group in Itasca, Ill.
Combined, the firms have more than 2,700 affiliated registered representatives and advisers. MSC by far is the largest in the group, with more than 1,500 advisers.
The network reported $355 million in gross revenue in 2005, the most recent year for which financials were available.
Talk of the four Pacific Select broker-dealers’ being up for sale has intensified for months.
Ameriprise Financial Services Inc. of Minneapolis most recently has been the firm that many have believed will acquire the Pacific Select broker-dealers (InvestmentNews, Jan. 22).
But Pacific Life went public in September, with the potential for an acquisition, when it took the extraordinary step of informing many of its reps that it did not have plans to sell the broker-dealers to Linsco/ Private Ledger Corp. of San Diego and Boston (InvestmentNews, Sept. 19).
Since then, the broker-dealers in the network have seen extreme instability of late in its leadership, with Mr. Poff’s leaving as chief executive only the latest.
In December, Associated Securities’ chief executive, John Hurley, resigned after less than two years at the firm (InvestmentNews, Dec. 11). At the time, one adviser said that Mr. Hurley simply wasn’t a good fit for the culture that was built over the years at Associated.
At Waterstone, longtime chief executive Tom Hopkins left the firm in August.