Turnover at the top

James Gorman of Morgan Stanley. Dan Arnold of LPL Financial Holdings Inc. And Ron Carson of Carson Group.

Those are just some of the names of senior leaders and industry fixtures who this year officially or suddenly stepped aside as CEO of leading wealth management brokerages and registered investment advisor firms.

This year saw an unusually significant number of top executives leave their posts as CEO or announce their departures – at least half-a-dozen – with some of the moves planned, while others were sudden.

While thousands of financial advisors work at the firms led by those three executives and the others mentioned below, advisors are often unfazed by changes at the top.

They are more concerned with the day-to-day operations of their own individual practices and see a CEO retiring as part of the life cycle of a large enterprise. That’s not the case for all advisors, with the most successful at times having personal relationships with their CEOs.

But the most startling change in 2024 was the case of Arnold, who had been CEO of LPL Financial Holdings since 2017.

It was a bolt from the blue, according to many LPL financial advisors who spoke to InvestmentNews privately in the aftermath. Arnold was fired by the firm’s board on October 1 for cause for making statements, not yet known publicly, to employees that violated the company’s code of conduct.

Known for his close attention to detail, Arnold rose through the ranks at LPL, outlasting competition like Bill Dwyer, Esther Stearns, Derek Bruton, and Robert “RJ” Moore. He was managing director and divisional president until 2011 and then promoted to chief financial officer. In 2015, he was bumped up again to president before becoming CEO in 2017 after Mark Casady retired.

Arnold was replaced by Rich Steinmeier, who had previously been managing director and chief growth officer.

“In each instance, the exits by the CEOs were for different reasons, but clearly what happened with Dan Arnold was unexpected and sudden,” said Jodie Papike, CEO and managing partner at Cross-Search. “All these firms had replacements, and in the case of LPL, Steinmeier was ready to step up.”

While others were reluctant to call the changes at the top of major firms a trend, the number of changes in senior management at major firms could not go unnoticed.

“It looks like it’s a changing of the guard across the advice and wealth management industry,” said Lou Diamond, an industry recruiter. “Some exits of CEOs were planned while others clearly were not, but in the former you saw the natural role of succession planning at firms.” 

“They put in the time, did amazing work, and now are passing the baton,” he added.

The changes of CEO this year read like a who’s who of the financial advice industry.

And the moves didn’t put a dent in the runaway year for broker-dealer stocks. The NYSE ARCA Broker Dealers index hit a 52-week high on November 25 of 859.98, a one-year increase of 69 percent.

In January, Ted Pick started the year replacing Gorman, who will become the head of the board at the Walt Disney Co. 

Pick joined Morgan Stanley in 1990, and before becoming CEO, he was the firm’s co-president, co-head of firm strategy, and head of the institutional securities group, overseeing investment banking, equities, fixed Income, global capital markets, and research.

In April, Burt White replaced Carson Group founder Ron Carson as CEO. An LPL Financial veteran, White joined Carson Group in 2022 and was chief strategy officer before taking over for Carson.

The change at the top of Carson Group came shortly before news broke about a lawsuit filed in March by Carson’s former chief marketing officer Mary Kate Gulick, who alleges she was retaliated against and ultimately fired for raising concerns about how the firm handled an alleged sexual assault by an employee at an industry conference.

The Charles Schwab Corp. announced in October that Walt Bettinger will step down effective December 31, and will be replaced as CEO by Rick Wurster, the company’s current president.

And in November, Cetera Financial Group said its CEO, Adam Antoniades, would be stepping down at end of year to be replaced by holding company CEO Mike Durbin.

Antoniades’ position as CEO of Cetera Financial Group had been in question since spring of 2023 when Cetera Holdings hired Fidelity veteran Mike Durbin to be CEO of the holding company, Cetera Holdings. In June 2023, WealthManagement.com reported that Antoniades would be replaced by Durbin as CEO of the broker-dealer network in six to nine months.

Meanwhile, Raymond James Financial Inc. in 2025 will see Paul Shoukry, its president, replace current CEO Paul Reilly.

“All these executives are big names in their own right, some who were cults of personality and some who were founders,” Diamond said. “As the years pass, firms are looking to grow in new ways under different leadership.”