A team of financial advisors with about $2 billion in advisory, brokerage and retirement plan assets are joining LPL Financial from Morgan Stanley.
In forming Maverick Partners Wealth Management, John Gallagher and Mark Levin will be aligned with Gladstone Wealth Partners, which supports LPL-affiliated advisors, and they will use LPL as the firm's custodian. The team will be setting up shop in Marlton, N.J., about 25 minutes from Philadelphia. Gallagher and Levin have a combined 65 years in the industry, have worked together since 2013 and have a support staff of four. Gallagher said the firm’s new name came from the definition of “maverick” as “independent-minded.”
“To make this move now, during a global pandemic and in the midst of market uncertainties, was a huge, carefully calculated decision,” Gallagher said. “We are entrepreneurs at heart and have decided to build a business that is our own, where we can be fiduciaries and keep our clients’ best interests at the forefront of everything we do.”
Levin said that the open architecture of LPL’s platform and the chance to choose its own partners would make it easier for Maverick to expand its team as needed to improve client experience, with the team’s ultimate goal being to build a high-end boutique firm. The duo will be working with Gladstone Managing Partner and CEO Richard Frick, who they previously worked with at Morgan Stanley. The prior relationship actually helped bring Gallagher and Levin into the LPL fold, and Frick lauded the two for being one of “the premier teams” for Morgan Stanley.
“Their move to independence represents the continuing trend of successful, high-net-worth teams gaining independence to have more control over how they run their businesses and how they serve their clients,” Frick said. “They chose to align with Gladstone for the personalized support and dedicated resources we provide to transitioning advisors, backed by LPL’s size, scale and innovative capabilities.”
The partnership is the latest in a number of teams joining LPL Financial from other companies, including Trilith Wealth Management, a Naples, Fla.-based family team with $200 million in managed assets that joined LPL from Wells Fargo Advisors. Additionally, LPL recruited a father/son team with about $150 million in assets based out of St. Louis; the duo joined LPL from Securities Service Network, which is part of Advisor Group.