Ex-Wells Fargo Advisors chief Kowach launching new firm

A group of senior executives from Wells Fargo Advisors with a $40 million war chest are planning to embrace a registered investment advisor aggregator and roll-up strategy, according to sources familiar with their plans.

The new firm is led by the former head of Wells Fargo Advisors, David Kowach, and is oddly to be christened with the symbol "&." Its launch is imminent, according to the two sources, who spoke confidentially to InvestmentNews about the matter.

Joining Kowach at the new enterprise is another former senior executive at Wells Fargo Advisors, John Alexander. The identities of the major investors in the new business aren't clear.

Both Kowach and Alexander left Wells Fargo Advisors last year; the former in June and the latter in March. In a broad shakeup of Wells Fargo's wealth management operations, 2023 has seen the exodus of senior wealth management executives with decades of experience at Wells Fargo and its numerous predecessor firms.

"I can't really comment at this time," Alexander said in an email Monday morning. A spokesperson for Wells Fargo declined to comment.

It's not clear when the launch of the new aggregator will occur, with industry sources describing the timing as imminent.

"Kowach has been laying the groundwork for this since last year," one source said. "They are using the ampersand symbol and calling it ampersand. The point is to give financial advisors the ability to self-brand, so you don’t have to have the 'of' or 'with' in the title line, like Smith LLC 'of' such and such firm."

"Kowach has raised over $40 million and John Alexander is part of it," said another well-placed industry source. "It's all former Wells Fargo guys."

"From a branding perspective, it's always a risk to use a symbol," the source added, particularly with a company's URL, or web address. "But it is certainly bold."

The financial advice industry is replete with RIA aggregators and roll-ups, with aggregators steadily gaining traction by buying so-called breakaway brokers, or financial advisors who leave Wall Street banks to work as part of a smaller firm or an independent RIA. And there are plenty of examples of executives leaving a major firm, sitting on the sidelines to wait out their noncompete agreements, then reentering the financial advice industry.

Kowach, who headed Wells Fargo Advisors until 2019, said last year that he was retiring. At the time, he was “head of affluent” at Wells Fargo. Alexander was head of the divisional network at Wells Fargo Advisors when he left the firm and second to James Hays, head of Wells Fargo Advisors, at the time. Hays also left Wells Fargo last year.

Wells Fargo & Co., the giant bank, has been overhauling its wealth management business for the past few years, consistently plucking talent from JPMorgan Chase & Co.

In 2020, Wells Fargo hired Barry Sommers from JPMorgan to lead its Wealth and Investment Management group, known internally as WIM. Then it hired Sol Gindi, also from JPMorgan, as chief financial officer of WIM; two years later, Gindi was promoted to be the head of Wells Fargo Advisors, which operates under the broad WIM umbrella at the bank.