UBS hires $1.4B Bernstein team, betting the client network travels

Four financial advisors managing $1.4 billion in client assets left Bernstein Private Wealth Management late last month for UBS's Los Angeles private wealth office, where they will operate as Lumina Wealth Partners, Financial Advisor Magazine reported. Pasha Azad, Dayne Crist, Steven Summerhays and Koby Dardashti made the move to UBS late last month, per a UBS release, bringing with them senior wealth strategy associates Ryan Siroky and Lexie Kamran, senior registered client associate Alex Day, and registered client associate Nick Horn.

The group's stated clientele — entrepreneurs, founders, business owners, executives, artists, entertainers, professional athletes and multigenerational families — is made up of clients who choose advisors over platforms, and UBS is paying for the advisors.

Kate Daniels, senior market director for Los Angeles Private Wealth Management at UBS, said in a statement that "the advisors' arrival comes at an exciting time for UBS in Los Angeles, as our new space brings together colleagues and capabilities from across the firm to help us address the increasingly complex needs of our clients." The new office in Century City, where Lumina Wealth will sit, brings together more than 225 employees across UBS Private Wealth Management, Wealth Management and the Investment Bank, including municipal traders and more than 20 consultants, UBS said.

The move prices talent at $2.9 million per advisor — a price that only works if UBS is buying the network rather than just the assets, and the advisors' individual histories suggest that network is unusually deep.

Azad, who has spent more than 15 years advising entrepreneurs, founders, artists, entertainers and multigenerational families, joins as a managing director and private wealth advisor. Crist, a former starting quarterback at Notre Dame, works with business owners, senior executives, athletes and entertainers; Summerhays, a former professional hockey player, brings more than a decade of experience with high-net-worth families, athletes, business owners and executives; Dardashti, a Los Angeles native, focuses on business owners, entrepreneurs, professional athletes and entertainers.

The sports pedigree is where the network lives: a former starting quarterback and a former professional hockey player reach peer groups that a traditional wealth manager would struggle to enter, and Dardashti's Los Angeles roots give the group a home-city advantage.

The fight for advisors has become a fight for platforms; UBS's Century City consolidation is one such bet, and the four advisors are the test of whether it holds.

Bernstein has lost a team and the client relationships attached to it, leaving the $1.4 billion to prove whether it stays put after a change of platform. If the athletes and entertainers follow their advisors, the $2.9 million per head will look like a reasonable entry fee into a clientele that rarely changes hands; if the assets drift, the niche was the product, not the office.