Wells Fargo adds Credit Suisse brokers under recruiting agreement

Wells Fargo & Co. successfully recruited about half the brokers from Credit Suisse Group AG that it looked at under the terms of a recruiting agreement it made with the Swiss firm, acording to bank officials. “We have successfully completed our recruiting of financial advisers pursuant to our agreement with Credit Suisse,” Wells Fargo's Chief Financial Officer John Shrewsberry, said during an earnings call with analysts on Thursday. “We were able to recruit substantially all of the advisers that we targeted.” Wells Fargo said in October that it struck a recruiting arrangement with Credit Suisse after the Zurich, Switzerland-based bank decided to exit its U.S. private banking business. The firm looked at a pool of about 220 advisers and recruited about half, according to Wells Fargo spokesman Tony Mattera. Brokers caught up in exits and mergers don't always welcome the change of employers that dealmaking brings, opening up recruitment opportunities for the competition. Credit Suisse saw three Houston-based teams with a combined $3.2 billion of assets head to UBS Group AG's wealth management business in November despite its arrangement with Wells Fargo. Some Barclays Plc advisers jumped to Bank of America Merrill Lynch last year after the British bank announced a deal to sell its U.S. wealth-management business to St. Louis-based Stifel Financial Corp. Sarah Anderson, an investor relations representative at Stifel, didn't immediately return phone calls seeking comment. The number of advisers at Wells Fargo's retail brokerage unit rose 1% in the first quarter to 15,064, while client assets increased 2% to $1.4 trillion from the end of last year, according to a supplement to the firm's earnings report Thursday. Headcount was little changed from the first quarter of 2015 and client assets were down 2% year-over-year. The San Francisco-based bank's wealth and investment management unit revenue declined 2% from the fourth quarter to $3.9 billion partly because income from brokerage transactions and asset-based fees were lower, Wells Fargo said in an earnings statement Thursday. Net income dropped 14% to $512 million from the final three months of 2015. Year-over-year, both net income and revenue were down 3% primarily for the same reasons, according to the statement.