Articles published 4/2025
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Vanguard gets new CFO, Salim Ramji's second, strategic and handpicked selection • High rates but lower-balance money markets • SEC loses nearly 1-in-5 staff -- largely from its legal nerve center
Apr 29, 2025Vanguard CEO puts John Bendl in strategic role • Money markets fall off record highs • Capital Group joins private credit goldrush • John Thiel signs on with DPL • RIA poaches top AssetMark exec, names him president.
Goldman Sachs signals Charles Schwab Corp. is out of the woods with huge rating upgrade based on less debt, more cash and 'durable' organic growth
Apr 26, 2025Analyst Alex Blostein pushed the target to $100 after the balance sheet looks healthiest since bank crisis, and TD Ameritrade customers are buying more Schwab products
Betterment will add self-directed investing in 2025 as part of grander post-robo plan-- something co-founder Jon Stein admits is likely long overdue
Apr 25, 2025CEO Sarah Levy also green-lit bridge-borrowing against investments as company moves beyond child-proof model to allow investor discretion -- and into more direct competiton with Schwab, Fidelity and Robinhood.
Top federal regulator floats putting 'mid-size' RIAs -- possibly up to $1 billion in AUM -- under sole state purview, and Adrienne Gurley provides insights in an RIABiz Q&A
Apr 24, 2025Commissioner Mark Uyeda dropped the bomb on April 8 and Gurley, a former SEC senior counsel, offered to answer questions about serious practical ramifications.
Altruist wins 'unsolicited' $152-million raise, including capital from Salesforce, which is midstream 'very deep integration' signalling shift to $1-billion-plus RIAs
Apr 23, 2025The Culver City custodian now has 20-plus $1-billion-plus RIAs and average size is 43% larger as integrations with Orion, Advyzon and Tamarac lay groundwork to tackle Schwab and Fidelity
Robinhood's surefire 'RIA' play -- custody and robo-advice -- just got shakier as its 'betting' ambitions go full bore and eight states (blue and red) throw up resistance
Apr 22, 2025'DNA' and rule issues are real but legal sources say Congress could soon make the firm's gambling foray a moot point.
Rick Wurster puts hard(er) date on Schwab spot bitcoin launch, after key hire and 400% surge in visits to its 'crypto site,' but isn't pulling down crypto red flags quite yet
Apr 19, 2025The Schwab CEO expects house 'spot' trading by mid-April 2026, though Schwab's site starkly warns crypto has no 'inherent value.'
Vanguard's deal with Blackstone follows its bleak, almost black, market prognosis • SSGA launches another 'Apollo' product, sans Apollo brand • SEC OKs 'green' exchange • Senators call out Trump 'fraud' in letter to new SEC chair
Apr 18, 2025Recession signals grow • Confirmed as chair, SEC's Atkins faces Trump decision • InvestCloud nabs ex-Envestnet COO • Tibergien protégé lands at RIA • RIAs still see direct-indexing as a solution hunting for a problem • Software companies hire & launch.
Charles Schwab Corp. buys stake in Wealth.com and became latest of Big Three to chase the $90-trillion-dollar asset hand-off
Apr 17, 2025Aging high-net-worth investors starting to seek answers about last, big transfer hold lion's share of Westlake, Texas, brokerage's $10 trillion in assets -- a place where Vanguard and Fidelity have made recent moves, too
Vanguard and Blackstone disclose joint 'initiative' to bring alts to mass investors after private 'talks' leak months ahead of planned news release
Apr 16, 2025The 'culture clash' collaboration of the kings of two different markets could be a good high-net-worth retail strategy for each -- but they have serious stuff to work out.
Goldman Sachs CEO's taste for sleek private jets runs into flak as cost cutting sweeps the bank and shareholder advocates oppose $80 million retention bonuses each for two top executives
Apr 15, 2025David Solomon jets around the world -- and to his luxury Bahamas retreat -- on a $70 million Gulfstream G650ER, one of two Goldman private planes.
Chuck Schwab stands at Trump's side (literally) and wins President's praise for supporting policies amid tariff fallout, while Schwab's chief investment strategist raises red flags
Apr 12, 2025Schwab co-chair intersects with Trump on policy, business [and golf,] while the company's chief investment officer Liz Ann Sonders has little good to say about government policies right now
Schwab finally launches alts to retail investors with $5 million, five years after initial iCapital deal, but just seven days before its CEO faces Wall Street
Apr 11, 2025The Westlake, Texas brokerage expresses urgency because 66% of retail assets are now high-net-worth -- with more than a million millionaires.
Never mind near 10% S&P 500 snapback, the Trump tariff war baked in 'enormous wealth destruction,' and it's hardly 'over,' asset managers say
Apr 10, 2025Today is so much better than yesterday after stocks rallied on a tariff 'pause,' but it is still a very bad situation; the damage assessment is just starting.
BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard show swagger, unity and 'smell blood' as they fire back at charges they perniciously colluded to advance ESG goals
Apr 10, 2025Shifting political winds may cause three asset managers with $26.72 trillion to 'go for the jugular,' Wall Street attorney says; not so fast, says a second securities attorney, 'There's a smoking gun here.'
Ken Fisher suggests to RIA client on X to close his account if he thinks he's 'childish' for saying Trump tariffs are 'stupid, wrong, arrogantly extreme'
Apr 9, 2025The owner and CIO of Fisher Investments was not alarmed as of last week, then changed his tune but still thinks fears over tariffs are overblown.
Envestnet quietly cleans up a mess behind take-private veil • Michael Kim is now a two-TAMP CEO • Bill Ackman scolds Trump, Lutnick for tariff overkill, alleged conflicts •
Apr 8, 2025Kim is now head of 'RIA' TAMP • In broad daylight, AssetMark edges closer to swallowing Adhesion • Ackman irked over ‘massive, disproportionate’ tariffs • Fisher sees market upside, if and when tariffs fail.
Betterment trims fee despite 'no pressure,' and can still upcharge 160% over robo fee by upselling CFP humans -- more than 100% over Vanguard -- with RIA-like fees
Apr 5, 2025The New York robo imposed 65 basis points in 2024 on humanized $1-million-plus accounts, but is not competing with RIAs and 'never has been'
Cantor Fitzgerald IA CIO sends midday letter to RIAs with take that reassures on tariffs, and he assures reporter that any aligment with Howard Lutnick is coincidental
Apr 4, 2025The note arrived in email boxes after the market collapsed 5% today and explains tariffs were needed and negative effects should be 'very' short in duration
Commonwealth and LPL CEOs are determined to share bright future after black swan HR event unlocked the opportunity
Apr 3, 2025Wayne Bloom and Rich Steinmeier both faced hard math after Dan Arnold's shock firing as LPL CEO, but then the numbers started to add up
Walt Bettinger joining CD&R just four months after Schwab retirement could signal a big private-equity play brewing
Apr 2, 2025The ex-Schwab CEO's appointment at Focus Partners' take-private owner, suggests the private equity player is positioning for a major move.
LPL CEO claims 'prize' 'anti-LPL' Commonwealth for just $2.7 billion, but the price will rise, experts say, to retain its advisors conditioned to know LPL as a place with subpar service, culture
Apr 1, 2025Only about four months into his job, Rich Steinmeier pulled off a coup, but poachers may smell blood, too.