Merrill adds $1.2B UBS advisory team in Santa Fe

Merrill Lynch added a Santa Fe, N.M., advisory team that oversaw $1.2 billion in client assets at UBS, along with four support staff, according to WealthManagement.com.

John Vazquez and Manuel Monasterio will be based in Merrill's Desert Mountain Market, led by market executive Elaine Darnell, and their team was producing about $4.7 million in revenue, AdvisorHub first reported.

Vazquez had been with UBS's North American wealth division since 1999 and Monasterio joined in 2008, according to BrokerCheck. Vazquez started at Dean Witter Reynolds in 1983; Monasterio started at A.G. Edwards in 2002, BrokerCheck shows.

The Santa Fe hire was the second recruiting win Merrill reported that week, after advisors who had overseen a combined $1.8 billion joined from Morgan Stanley, Truist and Wells Fargo.

Merrill has recorded the largest net advisor losses among firms this year through Aug. 13, at 552, according to Wolfe Research data cited by WealthManagement.com.

UBS ranks sixth among firms with net advisor losses at 190, according to Wolfe data cited in the coverage, after changing its compensation structure in 2025. The firm also announced it had drawn over three advisory teams overseeing a combined $2.6 billion from Merrill and Morgan Stanley. That announcement came in the week before the Santa Fe report, according to the coverage.