Merrill versus Jones
25 RepliesJump to last post
Seriously, just accept the offer from EJ now and be done with it. Your “analysis” shows you want to work there so just sign the letter and start the battle. It does not matter where you work. You just need to know that you are the best place possible so you can achieve your goals.
Bullinachinashop, that’s kind of silly. I gotta go with Spiff on this one. First of all, how many people “have 2 million to invest” and are driving around looking for a nice high-rise building? And like Spiff said - they’re going to notice the Jones office first anyway. And spare me by not saying “There’s $2million clients on every block.” Please. Obviously, both firms have good reputations (not counting the multi-multi-billion dollar writeoffs that ML is going through). In four years, I’ve done maybe 10 transfers from ML into my Jones office. Guess how many transfers ML has taken from me? In my business, it’s about the people and the service. It seems that sometimes the people who think so highly of ML, are people who work for ML.
Not having much experience I can’t begin to compare the two but I can say in the last week while door knocking I have come across two ML former employees (reg reps) who were out of a job due to some type of reduction at ML. Might just be our area but I gave them the EJ koolaid and they were thirsty…
Merrill Lynch is not that great as it is projected. New FAs fail at the 75% to 80% rate. If you have a father or uncle has $ 5 million more, you might consider to work for them.
I work for Jones. If I were starting as a “newbie” with no clients and no network I would go to Jones. If I was joining a team or had a wealthy natural market, I would join Merrill.
The silly argument about the $2mm account walking in the door is moot. Nobody with that amount of money just "walks in the door" anywhere. They get referred in. There are more $2mm+ accounts at Merrill offices than Jones (just being honest here), therefore you will get more large client referrals at a Merrill offices. Not good, not bad, not right, not wrong. Merrill and Jones have a lot of overlap in the middle-ground, Merrill doesn't take many small accounts (their payout process discourages it), and Jones does not have a process to focus on the HNW client (Jones as a firm can handle them, but most of our FA's do not align themselves that way - however, I know of several FA's that have 250-350 HH's with average accounts north of $500K - but these are typically our top producers). The sad thing is, Jones advisors CAN and DO have HNW cleints, many just get caught up in the hamster wheel from their first few years, where they were encouraged to open as many accounts as possible for any amount. Many of them get too comfortable making 125K per year, and don't do anything to grow their assets or swim upstream with their books.