February 5, 2021
Lewis Tse Pui Lung – stock.adobe.com
UBS Wealth Management USA on Friday underscored its focus on hiring high-end private banking teams with a group from JPMorgan Chase that was generating $26 million in annual revenue.
The seven-person team, which is led by Patrick Schaffer and Ryan Bristol, had been overseeing $6.5 billion in client assets at J.P. Morgan Private Bank, according to an announcement from UBS. It also includes advisors Barry Peterson, Corey Bazza and Dhanesh Bharvani as well as client associates Basel Sbeini and Shauna Kohanchi.
The Los Angeles-based team joined UBS’s private wealth management group for ultra-wealthy clients, according to the announcement, and follows UBS’s hire in October of a $6 billion-asset J.P. Morgan Private Bank team in Atlanta.
“We look forward to working closely with the team as we continue to grow our business in Los Angeles,” said Los Angeles complex director Lauren Gorsche.
UBS has revived its recruiting appetite since stepping back in 2017 but its renewed effort has focused on private bankers and white-shoe private wealth units of firms such as Goldman Sachs and Sanford C. Bernstein. The private bank recruits can bring well-heeled clients with substantial loan and deposit accounts, although their customers can also be more difficult to transfer given the challenge of moving large loans and their entrenchment at the bank.
Big banks can also be more defensive of the customers who are often referred to private bankers in contrast to traditional grid-based brokers who build their practices through prospecting. JPMorgan, for example, this week went to court to block a former Chase Wealth Management broker in New Jersey from soliciting clients to join him at Merrill Lynch.
In 2018, it also brought a claim against a $14 billion-asset private banking duo in Chicago who joined Merrill Lynch. The two advisors agreed to not solicit their former clients as part of a stipulated agreement pending the outcome of a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration proceeding.
A spokeswoman for JPMorgan declined to comment on the departure or whether it would seek to enforce its non-solicitation provisions in this case. The company recently consolidated its wealth units under J.P. Morgan Wealth Management although it left the private bank, which serves clients with at least $10 million in assets, as its own brand.
Neither Schaffer nor Bristol could immediately be reached for comment on their move. Schaffer had been ranked at #25 on Barron’s list of the top advisors in California in 2020 with $4.3 billion in team assets. A spokesperson for UBS did not immediately return a request for comment on its calculation for the team’s book size.
Schaffer first registered as a broker with J.P. Morgan Securities in 2011 and before that worked for an investment bank and at two hedge funds, according to his BrokerCheck record and UBS’s release.
Bristol started his career at Goldman Sachs & Co. in 1999, moved to Morgan Stanley in 2001 and also worked at Banc of America Investment Services, Financial West Group, EPlanning Securities and Sanford C. Bernstein before joining JPMorgan in 2012, according to his BrokerCheck record.