$790M team jumps to Merrill after four months at Barclays

Two high-producing financial advisers based in Los Angeles left Barclays Wealth Management for Merrill Lynch Wealth Management this month. Matt Celenza and Larry DiGioia registered with Merrill on July 6 — after less than four months at Barclays. The team manages $790 million in assets and had trailing-12-month revenue of $4.4 million at the wealth management unit of the British bank, which has been at the center of the London Interbank Offered Rate rate-rigging scandal. The move was announced today by Merrill Lynch. According to a source close to the team, the bad publicity arising from the Libor scandal was not the reason for the team's move. Rather, they did not like where the office was located in Los Angeles or the firm's wealth management platform. “The platform didn't meet expectations,” the source said. A Barclays spokeswoman said the firm does not comment on current or former employees. Prior to their brief stint at Barclays, Mr. Celenza and Mr. DiGioia were at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC. Mr. Celenza started at Smith Barney/Citigroup Global Markets Inc. in 2001 and Mr. DiGioia joined the company a year later. The two advisers serve multifamily offices and high-net-worth individuals — many of whom are founders of publicly traded companies. Along with investment management, the team specializes in overseeing concentrated securities positions, custom lending, philanthropic management, wealth transfer and trust services. Barclays, the first financial institution to settle allegations by U.S. and U.K. regulators that it manipulated Libor, has been expanding its wealth management business in the U.S. Toward that end, the British bank has been concentrating on high-end advisers — those with at least $2 million in annual production. The company had more than 250 advisers at the end of the June quarter. Globally, the wealth management business had $276 billion in AUM at the end of the quarter — a 7% jump from the end of last year.