Baird nabs $267M Morgan Stanley Smith Barney team; J.P. Morgan adds 70 advisers

Baird grabs MSSB advisers, opens Winston-Salem branch A team of four financial advisers has left Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, where they advised on $267M in client assets, to join the private-wealth-management group at Robert W. Baird & Co., according to a company spokesperson. The group, which includes Jon Bolton, J. Stephen Rowell, C. Scott Wray and E. Lee Cain, will open Baird's first Winston-Salem, N.C. branch. Joining them in that office will be Jeff Trollinger, who was most recently an adviser for AIG VALIC/AIG Retirement. The amount of client assets he advised could not immediately be learned. With the addition of this team, Baird has recruited more than 100 financial advisers to its wealth management group this year, according to a statement from the firm. As InvestmentNews noted in July, the wealth management firm has well surpassed its total number of recruits for 2008, when it added 59 advisers. JPMorgan beefing up Bear Stearns' private-client group JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s chief executive noted this week that he is looking to add “really good” brokers in the near future to bolster its retail-brokerage business. But the firm apparently already has been busy adding advisers in at least one part of its private-wealth business in recent months. According to a report from Dow Jones, JPMorgan has recruited more than 70 financial advisers in 2009 for its Bear Stearns Private Client Services — which it acquired last March after Bear Stearns & Co. Inc. nearly collapsed. JPMorgan also has plans to open two or three offices for Bear Stearns' private-wealth business, according to the report, which would represent the first new office the unit has opened in 15 years.