Merrill hires Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo teams managing $770 million

Merrill recruited two advisor teams overseeing a combined $770 million in client assets — one out of Morgan Stanley and one out of Wells Fargo — the larger book landing in New York and the smaller in South Florida while neither team left the employee channel.

Michael Scotto and Michael Chong, who managed roughly $530 million at Morgan Stanley, joined Merrill's Park Avenue market under market executive Joe Doonan with senior relationship manager Douglas Badstein and registered client associate Louis Aldorasi. Scotto, a 25-year industry veteran, started on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange before moving to Morgan Stanley; Chong began at Edward Jones with 17 years in the business and moved to Morgan Stanley a year later.

Jeff Chanin left Wells Fargo for Merrill's Boca Raton office, led by senior resident director Scott Kauffman within the Florida Tropics market under market executive Jason Edelmann, carrying his roughly $240 million book and registered client associate Tara Mirjah after more than three decades in the business.

The same round carried two quieter moves: Arlis Ortman and Sean Pahut, who managed approximately $180 million at LPL Financial, joined Raymond James's independent advisor channel, a hire announced by Theresa Schnetz, Western division director at Raymond James Financial Services. The pair operate as Montana Wealth Management from offices in Great Falls and Bozeman, serving business owners, families, individuals, retirees, and people who have come into sudden wealth. Ortman spent nine years at his previous firm; Pahut has 28 years in financial services, the last five at the previous firm.

"Raymond James' leadership has built a culture that supports advisors while keeping client service at the center," Ortman said.

In Massachusetts, Michelle Ferguson left Edward Jones for UBS as a financial advisor in Hyannis. A 20-year veteran of the industry with earlier roles at Bank of America and Sovereign Bank, she was born in the Philippines and joins UBS's Greater New England market, led by regional director Chris DiMuria, market executive James Ducey and market director Bryan Collins.

"Michelle has dedicated her career to helping clients navigate life's biggest financial decisions, while also giving back to the community she calls home," Collins said.

Set the four moves side by side and the breakaway is missing: Scotto, Chong and Chanin went wirehouse to wirehouse, Ortman and Pahut went independent to independent from LPL into Raymond James's channel, and Ferguson went from Edward Jones to UBS, one employee model to another. Not one advisor chose to build an independent firm, and no book crossed between the employee and independent halves of the market.

The breakaway has ceded the headline to the lateral move, and the team liftout, not the solo leap, is where assets actually change hands; this round does not complicate that read, because the $770 million Merrill gathered is the largest sum disclosed here and it moved between firms running the same employee model the departing teams already knew.

Scale is where the round looks smaller than its headline, because in September NewEdge moved four Fort Lauderdale teams and $12 billion in a single day—the kind of transaction that produced the conclusion that block trades had replaced advisor-by-advisor recruiting. Merrill's $770 million is not a trade of that size; it belongs to the layer beneath, where a $180 million pair out of LPL and a single advisor out of Edward Jones are still the ordinary unit of business.

The origin firms carry the loss differently. Morgan Stanley can absorb a $530 million exit; PWD's tracking lists a $1.0 billion breakaway on Oct. 1 and two more on Oct. 3 among the firm's recent events, and that ledger measures a recruiting problem better than any single departure does. Wells Fargo has been a recurring name on the other side of these moves: in August, Raymond James was losing $545 million and answering by hiring from Wells Fargo. Chanin's exit sends his book in the other direction, to a wirehouse peer, without taking Wells Fargo off the market's list of suppliers.

Raymond James's hire landed days after the firm announced a new model portfolio offering aimed at advisors working with high-net-worth clients, pairing a recruiting win out of LPL with product built for the top of the client base. The Montana advisors picked the firm running both; whether the pairing holds advisors in place is a question an announcement cannot answer.

Ferguson's is the only move in the round with no dollar figure attached, the usual treatment for a single advisor on a tape scored in disclosed assets. In September, the case was that the quieter moves are the ones to watch; the Hyannis hire is what quiet looks like: a 20-year veteran, a regional announcement, and a book size the market never gets to see.