In a major 'get' MarketCounsel books Dodd and Frank to play Vegas

Brooke’s Note: How do you get Chris Dodd and Barney Frank in the same room, same day and for the first time with financial advisors in Las Vegas and during the early holiday season — with a cocktail clause requiring mingling with your troops in a reception atmosphere? Yes, you pay them a boatload of money. But if you’re Brian Hamburger and crew, you also work the phones rather intensively because of your “overnight” and “mingling” demands and the need to negotiate with two speakers bureaus who have little regard for accomodating each other. Could a big custodian have pulled this off? Maybe not, considering that outsourced conference staffs may not have been excited about getting thrown into not-in-the-playbook negotiation. It’s the kind of thing you pay high-level lawyers with negotiating skills to do — lawyers like Hamburger. So this coming together of Dodd and Frank in front of RIAs has to be appreciated for the fortunate alignment of stars and dollar bills. Such confluence probably only occurs when a conference organizer is still small enough to do home-cooked negotiations but big enough — and risk-hardened enough — to write some close-your-eyes checks.

In a conference-booking coup, Brian Hamburger has inked in the authors of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to headline the MarketCounsel Summit at the Four Seasons Hotel in Las Vegas this December.

It took some doing.

Shortly after September’s MarketCounsel Summit wrapped, Hamburger and his staff met to discuss the next year’s keynote speaker. Which public figure would speak most directly to advisors’ concerns? Which was most vital to the advancement of the industry?

Two names came immediately to mind: former Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.). With the passage of the act bearing their names, “Investment advisors fell within the crosshairs and became part of the national debate,” says Hamburger. See: The dark side of the 'good’ regulatory changes get scrutinized at MarketCounsel Summit 2011.

All the trimmings

But, after the expected logistical hurdles of making personal schedules and conference dates jibe, getting the ex-legislators to appear together was not the slam-dunk it might have appeared to be. The two are signed with different speakers bureaus and, surprisingly, they have yet to appear together at a conference, according to Hamburger, who is founder and managing director of MarketCounsel LLC.

“They’d never been booked for same event,” he says. “We had to pick them off the shelf separately. It took lots of phone calls.”

And getting them to accede to Hamburger’s particular specifications took a healthy dose of dogged persuasion. In addition to Dodd and Frank giving a joint talk, Hamburger wanted the men to attend a private dinner with industry leaders and to mingle at a cocktail party with conference attendees. After the morning keynote, Hamburger wanted them to engage in a Q&A with the audience and meet with reporters for a full-on press conference.

Yearning to breathe fee

Hamburger made his case in a March 15 letter addressed jointly to Dodd and Frank that read in part:

We work for advisers including those with limited assets under management to those with billions of dollars under their management. All, however, would be considered “small businesses” by any measure. These are the refugees of the securities industry. They are predominantly comprised of men and women that have left the employ of one of the global financial services providers to pursue their entrepreneurial dream and work with their clients free of so many of the conflicts of interest that encumbered them at their former employer.

Brian Hamburger: We had to pick
them off the shelf separately. It
took lots of phone calls.

Hamburger’s eloquence — plus a hefty speakers’ honorarium at market rate (because it involved two speakers bureaus, getting both speakers at once, having them mingle with attendees and reporters and the two had never been together before, the bureaus weren’t excited about negotiating fees down, according to Hamburger) — the first time MarketCounsel has compensated keynote speakers — did the trick. At the event, which will run Dec. 10-13, the two will address their law’s effect on investment advisers, in particular discussing proposals to improve investment adviser examinations, which may result in requiring them to join a self-regulatory organization or be subject to user fees, as well as the “harmonization” of broker-dealer and investment adviser regulations. See: Nine threats to the RIA business and how they can be avoided.

Twice the price

The A-plus keynote speakers are in line with the expanded scope of this year’s conference — one that reflects a shift in Hamburger’s philosophy. He has long questioned whether a couple of inspirational speakers and one or two industry people mixed in with a bunch of “glossy pitches” is really worth advisors’ time.

Accordingly, at previous conferences Hamburger has de-emphasized big-name headliners and concentrated on booking industry leaders and grouping them together on panels in a manner geared to spark provocative conversations. A good example is last year’s High Noon-like gathering of roll-up execs on one panel that produced some lively give-and-take. See: What exactly the CEOs of HighTower, Focus Financial and Dynasty Financial revealed when they shared a stage in Las Vegas.

“I’m not crazy about headliners, it’s gotta be relevant,” Hamburger says. “When I was going through the speakers bureau, there were lots of impressive speakers, but if you look at it through the lens of who directly impacts investors — it narrows the list significantly. See: At MarketCounsel Summit 2011, some hard-hitting speeches followed by 'Mohita Madness’.

This year, he says, “We wanted to raise the profile of the event but also to place the event in the pre-eminent non-gaming location that was still on the Vegas strip.” The Four Seasons fit the bill. MarketCounsel is also aiming to double the size of the conference, hoping to sign up 425 attendees as opposed to last year’s 225. Hamburger estimates that making this happen will balloon the budget for the conference to more than double that of last year’s gathering. “We’ve never run the conferences with a profit motive,” Hamburger says.

No-frills no more: This year’s MarketCounsel
Summit will be held at the
ritzy Four Seasons in Las Vegas.

Stay a spell

Hamburger declined to name other speakers on the program, saying he will roll them out in the coming weeks.

Speaking of the December conference’s expanded scope, Hamburger notes that he is following the RIA industry trend of “following the rule of compounding.” But in doing so, he’s aware that the conference risks the same downside facing many rapidly growing RIA firms: losing the intimacy and uniqueness that made them appealing in the first place.

Hamburger believes he can guard against that eventuality. “We don’t go out and hire a conference company. We require speakers to stay for a night, No fly in and fly out — they need to stick around and field questions over dinner and cocktails. It’s all about the conversation. Were happy to have new faces but we also have to respect folks who have been here for some time.” See: Brian Hamburger answers the questions about an SRO future that has RIA stomachs in turmoil.