Rockefeller adds J.P. Morgan team in Houston

Rockefeller Global Family Office hired a Houston advisory team from J.P. Morgan led by Chris Sheets and Forrest Green; the two reports of the move put its client assets at $1.4 billion and at $700 million.

The Houston group is Sage Wealth Partners, which worked at J.P. Morgan Advisors as SGH Group alongside a third partner, T. Scott Holstead, according to AdvisorHub. WealthManagement.com reported on Oct. 26 that the team previously managed $1.4 billion, citing a Forbes Best-in-State advisor ranking. AdvisorHub reported three days earlier, citing a source, that the team oversaw $700 million and produced $4.8 million in annual revenue.

For advisors weighing a recruiting offer, the practical detail is that the same Houston roster can be presented at $1.4 billion or $700 million. Neither report explains how the two figures were derived, and neither reconciles them.

AdvisorHub's second source said Holstead, a founding member of the Houston wealth office, stayed at J.P. Morgan while nine other team members moved, including Cameron Sheets. WealthManagement.com described a seven-member team and named the roster beyond Sheets and Green, both managing directors: Nick Routzahn, Hayden Kerns and Cameron Sheets as vice presidents and private advisors, Karoline Humphries as team chief operating officer and McKenna Whitney as client associate and analyst.

Both reports place Sheets and Green at Bernstein Private Wealth Management before J.P. Morgan. AdvisorHub, citing registration records, said Sheets began his advisory career there in 2002 and Green in 2004, and that both joined J.P. Morgan in 2018. WealthManagement.com described Sheets' practice as alternative and private investments, wealth structuring and pre-liquidity-event planning, and Green's as intergenerational wealth transfer, concentrated stock positions, preparing privately held businesses for sale and generating cash flow.

J.P. Morgan Advisors, the bank's traditional brokerage unit, has around 600 advisors, according to AdvisorHub. A week before that report, two of the unit's largest teams, led by Phil Scott and Jim Atwood, left to launch their own RIA with $18.6 billion in client assets and $130 million in combined annual revenue, AdvisorHub reported.

Rockefeller Capital Management, the parent, oversaw about $237 billion in client assets, according to WealthManagement.com; AdvisorHub put the figure at $237 billion at the end of August. Earlier this month the firm hired a $1.2 billion Truist team for a Naples, Florida office, AdvisorHub reported, and it added a UBS team in Columbus, Ohio, that oversaw $350 million, Shea Wealth Partners, led by Andrea M. Shea and her son Martin E. Shea, who produced $2.5 million in annual revenue, according to the same source.

In Houston, Rockefeller added a Merrill Lynch team in April that produced $14 million in annual revenue, AdvisorHub reported, more than the revenue figure its source attached to the Sheets and Green group. Rockefeller opened a Columbus office in August with Jones Wealth Partners, a team from Merrill Lynch, and already had offices in Cincinnati and Cleveland, the firm said at the time.