Troubled bank continues to haemorrhage assets
Two additional First Republic advisors, totalling $555 million in AUM, are joining the ranks of RBC Wealth Management.
Theresa Allen, whose experience in the business spans three decades, and Brian Addington both joined RBC as managing directors and advisors. Addington joined the bank's San Francisco branch with $300 million in client assets, and Allen joined the Newport Beach office with $255 million in assets.
Addington began her career in the financial sector in 1997 with Merrill Lynch. She then worked for short periods at Wells Fargo, Citicorp, and Bank of America before returning to Merrill in 2009. IAPD records indicate that he left for First Republic in 2020. Allen began working at Unionbanc Investment Services in 2000 and joined First Republic in 2010, according her IAPD page.
In the midst of a crisis brought on by Silicon Valley Bank's demise, Addington and Allen are the most recent advisors to leave First Republic. With a roughly 90% decline in market value and clients withdrawing money after SVB's collapse, First Republic was in jeopardy.
In an effort to staunch the bank's bleeding last month, 11 institutions put $30 billion in deposits there, but advisors have remained uneasy, and some have left for new residences.
The Todd Halbrook and Adam MacDonald Management Group left First Republic a few weeks ago, recruited by RBC. The $1 billion squad was headquartered in Newport Beach, California, just like Allen. Other advisors have departed First Republic for firms including Morgan Stanley, UBS, JPMorgan, and Rockefeller, among others.
Although this is the case, First Republic's CEO and President Mike Roffler stated during the bank's first quarter results call on Monday that the departures as of the end of March represented less than 20% of its overall wealth management assets. Roffler said that, as of April 21, the bank has kept around 90% of its advisors since the crisis.
“Over the past seven weeks, as we were impacted by industry events, our commitment to delivering exceptional client services has not wavered,” Roffler stated that he did not answer any questions from analysts on the call, but instead read from a prepared statement.
The company's wealth management assets ended the first quarter at $289.5 billion, an increase of 6.7% over the previous quarter. $223 million was generated from wealth fees, and the bank's overall income from wealth management in the first quarter of the year was 18.5% of that amount.
