NewEdge hires UBS team managing $3 billion in South Florida

NewEdge Wealth, a recent entrant in the ultra-competitive market for hiring and recruiting wirehouse brokers and advisers, said Friday it had hired an 11-person UBS team in South Florida that's led by Ghislain Gouraige and Jared Kaplan, both 15-year veterans of UBS, who will continue to be based in Coral Gables.

Gouraige and Kaplan are joining NewEdge Wealth as partners, said Rob Sechan, managing partner and CEO of NewEdge Wealth, which has two business sides: a registered investment adviser and a platform for brokers to leave large firms and open their own RIAs.

Gouraige and Kaplan's team is now under the NewEdge Wealth RIA, Sechan said. The team had $3 billion in client assets at UBS and produced $15 million in annual revenue, he added.

The hiring comes just days after NewEdge said that Robert J. McCann, UBS' former chairman for the America's region, was returning to the financial advice industry as co-chair of NewEdge Capital Group, which works with 300 financial advisers and $30 billion in client assets. He retired from UBS at the end of 2020.

Sechan, who left UBS in 2020 to join NewEdge Wealth, declined to discuss specifics regarding compensation for the new advisers or the terms of the recruiting deal used to lure senior advisers to NewEdge.

"We're one of the fastest growing RIAs and enablement platforms in the industry," he said.

A spokesperson for UBS declined to comment on the hiring of the South Florida team.

Other UBS advisers hired by NewEdge as part of the team in the Coral Gables office include Claudio Ravinet, Michael Weinberg and Michelangelo Dooley.