BNY Mellon Pershing’s former managing director Jim Roth has joined Oyster Consulting, a consulting firm with a growing focus on the wealth management space.
Roth joins Oyster after 30 years at Pershing, most recently as managing director and relationship management lead for Pershing’s largest clients. At Oyster, he will advise clients on brokerage operations and planning services for advisors.
“Like any organization, BNY Mellon Pershing has changed. They’ve changed because of the regulatory environment; they’ve changed associates; they’ve changed members of their leadership team (some have retired),” said Roth who worked at Pershing for 31 years.
The move is the latest in a string of wealth management industry veterans hired by the Richmond, Va-based consulting firm as it seeks to build out a business in the retail financial services industry.
Jim Roth
He follows close on the heels of Oyster hiring FINRA’s former midwest regional director Ed Wegener to join its compliance team after two decades at the self-regulatory organization.
Oyster serves broker-dealers, investment advisors, hedge funds, ETFs, high trading firms, mutual funds, private equity firms and exchanges. It’s been building its services out to liken itself to big accounting competitors like Deloitte, Accenture, PwC and KPMG, hence the reason it touts its more experienced recruits from big consulting and accounting firms.
Roth then said, “As opposed to wearing one single hat and calling it BNY Mellon and Pershing, I think what the Oyster opportunity presents me is going in independently and really trying to figure out what’s best for the advisors and what’s best for the broker-dealer.”
Oyster offers recruits the option to be fully employed or independent contractors. Roth joined as an independent. Wegener is a full-time employee.
At Oyster Roth will work with clearing and introducing firms, and help broker/dealers, for instance, decide whether it’s appropriate to be self-clearing or fully disclosed for their particular business model, says Pete Bowman, managing director of Oyster’s strategic planning and execution team.
“Jim’s track record in the Wealth Management industry is second to none. His professionalism and knowledge have earned him the respect and trust of all who know him. I am proud to have him on the team and look forwarded to learning from Jim’s successes,” said Bowman in a statement.
Wegener will manage compliance, risk management and supervisory controls for broker-dealers and alternative trading systems.
The 12-year-old firm announced last September that it restructured its leadership and focus to include the retail financial services industry.
It promoted Bowman along with two other associates, Polly Cordle and David Williams, to managing director positions. Cordle runs Oyster’s solution’s software business and Williams heads its business development unit. Its founders, CEO Buddy Doyle, CFO Robert Hall and General Counsel Patrick Dennis remain in their existing positions.
Bowman said he’s recruited four professionals (including Roth) to his team in the past 12 months.
Nikki Brinkerhoff joined the firm in February 2019 as an associate director on the compliance team, recently leaving that position after one and a half years for Beacon Capital Management.