UBS hires Merrill’s John Pham and Jimmy Yip, a $7.5 million Silicon Valley team

John Pham and Jimmy Yip produced $7.5 million in annual revenue at Merrill Lynch, and UBS Wealth Management USA hired the pair, announcing Friday that they joined in Palo Alto and San Jose with three support staff—Leslie Vinoya, Kimberly Russell and Randall Bane—moving with them, AdvisorHub first reported. The book they brought over has two very different stated sizes: a source familiar with the move put it at $575 million in assets, while a second source close to the team said the pair managed closer to $1.2 billion, some of which may take longer to transfer, and a third source said two junior brokers and a client associate stayed at Merrill.

That spread between two accounts of the same book is an open question for anyone modeling a similar move, and the fact that Pham and Yip landed at UBS after several years of weighing alternatives is evidence that $500 million-plus teams in wealth-dense markets still command a wirehouse offer and a multi-firm comparison. The transfer timetable behind the larger figure is the part of the economics a headline number does not carry.

Pham and Yip weighed the move for several years and evaluated Morgan Stanley, Rockefeller Capital Management and LPL Financial, the second source said. Their combined production fell short of the $10 million minimum that qualified teams for a 16-year offer paying 550% of annual revenue. The richest structure described in AdvisorHub's reporting was not one they qualified for. LPL's place on that shortlist belongs to a longer trend this publication has followed: independence economics keep improving while wirehouse packages keep growing, and a large book can price both sides of that trade. What a lift-out check has to cover, and what risk the advisor carries in exchange, is the part of the offer sheet worth reading twice.

UBS is running this play at volume. This month the firm added three teams with $2.7 billion in combined assets from Morgan Stanley and Merrill, and it has rebuilt its recruiting bench around Ben Firestein, the former Morgan Stanley recruiting head, and the promotion of Lisa Golia to head of the field; Merrill recruited a UBS team with $1.2 billion in New Mexico assets earlier in September, and both firms are re-emphasizing veteran broker recruiting. UBS executives have forecast better retention and recruiting in the second half of 2026 after 19 months of defections tied to compensation and management changes, and last week's 2027 compensation plan left the core payout grid unchanged while adjusting the edges to reward growth and loyalty.

UBS's San Francisco market head, Emily de la Reguera, called their experience serving Silicon Valley executives an important part of the firm's continued growth in the region. For advisors pricing the same decision, the useful comparison is the platform they would still want to sit on once the transition money is spent, not the top of the offer sheet. Nothing in AdvisorHub's account puts a number on what UBS paid, and the pair's move after missing the $10 million bar suggests the check was not the only variable.