Barclays share price: Wealth management unit loses three advisers to BofA

Three more Barclays (LON:BARC) US wealth advisers opted to join Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofA), forgoing a move to Stifel Financial Corp.

BofA said yesterday that Barry Schneider, Cris Bera and Chris Dewhurst had joined its Private Banking & Investment Group. Based in Houston, the trio managed more than $750 million in assets at Barclays for mostly high net worth clients in the oil and gas industry.
Including the Texas team, fifteen advisers have left Barclays’ US wealth management arm in the past month, having been poached by BofA, following the announcement that the unit was being sold. On June 8, Barclays announced that it had signed an agreement to sell its Wealth & Investment Management franchise in the US to Stifel.
As part of the transaction — due to close in mid-November, subject to regulatory approvals and customary conditions – Stifel is currently offering Barclays advisers retention packages of 150 percent of their last 12 months of production. However, according to some estimates, BofA could have offered over 300 percent of the advisers’ annual revenue in the form of up-front and back-end bonuses tied to performance goals.
“Those are the cherries that they want to have,” Howard Diamond, a managing director at Diamond Consultants, said. “When the Stifel deal was announced, advisers weighed the retention package that they’d get from Stifel against a huge upfront package they’d get from Merrill Lynch, so if they’re going to go to a different firm, they might as well go where they want and be paid a lot more money.”
Barclays’ share price rose today. As of 14:43 BST, the stock was changing hand at 266.10p – 2.16 percent up intraday.
As of 15:11 BST, Wednesday, 01 July, Barclays share price is 266.00p.