Citing 'Moss Adams' vision, MarketCounsel makes 17th hire in nine months

Brooke’s Note: I continue to see the mind-bending growth and hiring binge at MarketCounsel as an industry news story for RIAs. The “R” in RIA stands for “registered” and so much is contained in that word in terms of spirit, accountability and hard legal wiring. Having an entrepreneur like Brian Hamburger throwing his all, financially and personally, into creating a large, focused and independent firm bent on making the “R” connect to the “IA”, with investment advice en masse, no job too big, could have significant consequences. See: What exactly is an RIA? It’s a creative business challenge as much as anything, hence the Moss Adams aspirations cited here. But Hamburger is no starry-eyed young entrepreneur going with his gut. All this grabbing and hoarding of legal talent looks more like the insider trading of human chattel from the person best positioned to see all that becomes and serves RIAs. MarketCounsel was a super mom-and-pop shop in a world of RIAs that fit the same description. As the RIA business transforms into a world of creative high-fliers manned by the best and brightest, Brian Hamburger is doing the same as an act of breathing that something that is in the RIA air.

MarketCounsel today announced its hire of the former managing director and general counsel of Focus Financial Partners LLC. See: Bringing a familiar ferocity, Brian Hamburger binges on Ivy League grads and wirehouse and securities-firm veterans in MarketCounsel restaffing.

David M. Mrazik joins Englewood, N.J.-based MarketCounsel as the right-hand man of CEO Brian Hamburger, assuming direct supervision over the firm’s professional service business units. Mrazik, a 2004 Harvard Law School graduate, takes the title of managing director of MarketCounsel and managing partner of the Hamburger Law Firm.

Mrazik joined Focus, a New York-based roll-up, in 2012, and departed it prior t being hired by MarketCounsel. From that perch, he has watched the RIA movement unfold and grow.

“I’ve seen the tailwinds and the confluences of forces pushing advisors to independence. The amount of runway for the industry is unprecedented.”

Locked and loaded

Mrazik is the 17th hire by Hamburger since the beginning of the year, the distillation of 400 person-to-person interviews — and a strategic talent grab reflecting a vision, he says. Last month, MarketCounsel brought aboard Ed Slezak, formerly of 1-800FLOWERS, Crumbs Bake Shop, Aéropostale and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, in a senior role. As CEO of Crumbs, he took the company from a purely company store operated model, to with brand licensing programs and franchising. Its 2013-2014 revenue of over $50,000,000 selling over 10 million units of various baked goods and other products in a high of 80 company operated stores, located from Boston to Washington, DC, Chicago and California. It had approximately 750 full and part-time employees at the time.

“Make no mistake about it. We are stockpiling an arsenal,” says Hamburger.

Brian Hamburger: We are stockpiling an
arsenal.

The dimensions of the weapon that Hamburger has in mind is best defined by a mostly extinct brand that once held out a promise and integrity and that still holds sway in the imagination of advisors. See: Will the real Moss Adams please stand up?.

“We set out to fulfill what Moss Adams set out to fulfill — taking on the most complex questions and offering solutions,” he says. See: Veres and Bruckenstein lure big RIAs to Denver to discuss getting even bigger.

Ground floor

Hamburger has made a tremendous hire, says Rich Gill, now managing director at AMG Wealth Partners and a former colleague of Mrazik at Focus. See: Why AMG’s poach of Rich Gill could be the missing ingredient for its V-8 roll-up engine.

“The hiring of David Mrazik is a real coup for MarketCounsel,” he says in a statement. “David is one of the brightest business and legal minds in our industry and his ability to find creative, business-focused solutions in a complex legal and regulatory landscape is invaluable. I very much look forward to working with him again as a key business partner.”

MarketCounsel’s hiring binge was triggered by what Hamburger sees internally — namely getting called into the formation of virtually every platform and custodian in the advice business. The common denominator, he says, is the need to chart business strategy within the realm of regulatory reality.

“Regulatory compliance isn’t a silo; it’s the floor,” he says. See: Bringing a familiar ferocity, Brian Hamburger binges on Ivy League grads and wirehouse and securities-firm veterans in MarketCounsel restaffing.

Hamburger adds that only about 15% of MarketCounsel’s legal work is related to breakaways and that his firm is more of a business consulting firm. These days, breakaways seek business counsel far in advance of leaving wirehouses and are booming going concerns, not fledgling RIA startups, within weeks of attaining independence. See: How exactly five ex-Barclays advisors and one analyst across three time zones combined to make a $3 billion RIA.

Ed Slezak will bring his touch
as a cake and flowers executive
to the blossoming RIA business.

Right place, right time

It’s a vision Mrazik shares.

“This is, without question, a defining moment — there aren’t many times as a professional when you can see the path forward to building something truly extraordinary in the right industry and at the right time,” he says. See: 9 things to know about the breakaway-to-RIA movement and why it’s likely to get bigger.

Though all the hires are driving overhead northward, MarketCounsel continues to invest solely out of operating capital. “We’ve received dozens and dozens of calls from financing vehicles. We rebutted them.” MarketCounsel continues to keep all its layers in New Jersey, a way to foster a culture and keep operating costs down. But Mrazik allows that swankier NYC office space may be in the renting.

Hamburger says he has seen too many firms fall into the trap of accepting outside funds and it curtails their power to abet independent entrepreneurs authoritatively and effectively. Indeed, Hamburger says, outside ownership of the RIA consulting practice at Moss Adams was a factor in its eventual dissolution.

Tibergien on Moss Adams

Mark Tibergien, CEO of Pershing Advisor Solutions, who headed and founded that Moss Adams unit, agrees with Hamburger’s basic assessment.

“The challenge for us was that we were inside of a large regional accounting firm that did not aspire to go national and we were not able to leverage the audit and tax practice of the firm which limited the cross referral opportunities.” See: Will the real Moss Adams please stand up?.

Tibergien adds: “It’s also important to remember that Moss Adams didn’t create that business. They had acquired another firm in which I was a partner, Management Advisory Services, where I had already built a reputation consulting to this industry on practice management, net and business valuation. And prior to that at Willamette Management where we were doing valuations of financial services companies. That goes back to the late 1970s, early ’80s.”

Mark Tibergien: The challenge for us
was that we were inside of
a large regional accounting firm that
did not aspire to go national.

Communal spirit

All that said, Tibergien stresses the importance of what Moss Adams did accomplish: “I would say that Moss Adams consulting did realize its potential. We produced the leading industry benchmark study for years which has now been replicated by many.”

In channeling its inner Moss Adams, MarketCounsel will likely not publish research reports. Hamburger considers his annual conference, MarketCounsel Summit, an example of the Moss Adams spirit of communal output. See: The MarketCounsel Summit gets the RIA business out of its shell.

Tibergien agrees with Hamburger that the scope of the opportunity for advising the RIA business has exploded.

“What is great about the business today is that there are more substantial professionally managed firms, and consultants to the industry are flourishing. Plus, every custodian and broker dealer has replicated parts of the practice management consulting model which Moss Adams created. This, I might add, includes Pershing Advisor Solutions.” See: At INSITE in Orlando, Pershing outs its robo-religious conversion complete with open API store, Silicon Valley and India skunkworks, Marstone robo deal and unabashed digi-speak.