Edward Jones to hire 1,000 advisers this year

Edward Jones intends to hire 1,000 new financial advisers across the United States and Canada by the end of 2010. According to a report in the St. Louis Business Journal, the brokerage firm says it is reaping the benefits from the national trend of financial advisers exiting bigger brokerages and bringing their clients with them. Edward Jones, which has $516 billion in assets under management, doesn't recruit a lot from other firms. But Dan Timm, the St. Louis-based firm's hiring partner, told the Business Journal that it brought in about 100 brokers from other firms last year – three times its normal rate. Dalton Schumacher, Edward Jones' area leader for Chicago, told Crain's Chicago Business the firm plans this year to add about 50 new hires in the Windy City area. The firm, which has 12,000 brokers in all, currently has about 385 advisers in the Chicago area. All told, Edward Jones plans to double the number of offices it has in the broader Chicago area over the next seven to eight years. While Mr. Schumacher couldn't provide an overall cost for the expansion, he told Crain's Chicago Business that the company spends about $75,000 to $100,000 to train an adviser. Edward Jones reportedly generated $3.5 billion in revenue in 2009.