UBS's $1.3 billion Cullman/Holt team leaves for Wells Fargo's FiNet

The Cullman/Holt Group has left UBS for Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network, joining the line of teams walking out of the Swiss bank's U.S. wealth division toward independent channels that keep collecting them. The move takes seven people and $1.3 billion in client assets from Upper Arlington, Ohio, to Ascend Advisory Group, a FiNet affiliate in Dublin, according to a Wells Fargo spokesperson.

Jeff Cullman, a managing director, and W. Bruce Holt, a senior vice president, will continue running the group, alongside one more advisor and four client associates. Three advisors splitting $1.3 billion works out to a little over $400 million apiece if the book divides evenly, which books of that construction rarely do; the headcount is the more instructive number, because four of the seven are client associates whose job is keeping accounts in place after the advisors who manage them change employers.

Ascend lists more than $2.5 billion in assets under management on its website, so the incoming book is meaningful expansion rather than a rounding addition, assuming the assets transfer somewhere near their stated size. FiNet president John Tyers cast the hire as a statement about the affiliate. "The move of a team of this size and quality is a reflection of the exceptional platform Tony Reilly and Ascend have created and the access to capabilities and solutions available through the FiNet platform," he said in a statement; Reilly is Ascend's founder and chief executive.

Winthrop & Co.'s recent advisor moves report names San Francisco-based Wells Fargo the largest beneficiary of teams leaving UBS, with 11 groups brought on in 2025, a count that comes from the consultancy rather than from either firm's disclosures. FiNet's 2026 already includes Touchstone Wealth Partners, a $2.1 billion former UBS group in Toledo that joined in April, and Snow Pine Private Wealth in Wayzata, Minn., which brought $1.7 billion in March. Add Cullman/Holt and three FiNet additions from UBS this year reach $5.1 billion, two of them in Ohio. UBS's attrition has more than one destination, too: WealthManagement.com's related coverage points to a $1.2 billion UBS team landing at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New Mexico.

Four Fort Lauderdale teams moved in a single day in September with $12 billion between them, part of a week that pushed disclosed advisor AUM in motion to $19.8 billion; against that, $1.3 billion is a real team and no longer a remarkable one.

UBS has been shedding advisors in North America since it lowered payout rates for some advisors and shifted incentives toward bringing on wealthier clients in a compensation plan restructured in 2025. Management has been forecasting a slowdown in the outflow, pointing to stepped-up recruiting and a retire-in-place program built to hold advisors who might otherwise field a competitor's offer. That program pays transitioning advisors a maximum incentive of 300% of trailing-12 production over the sunset period, according to Winthrop's report, a figure the analysts describe as quietly competitive with external recruiting packages for the retiring cohort. The report does not put a dollar figure on what a team of Cullman/Holt's size would command externally, so the comparison stays qualitative.

Winthrop's analysts say UBS is testing the trough for its advisor losses in 2026, and that second-quarter results support the call on strong net new assets but not yet on advisor headcount. Assets and headcount can move in opposite directions for a long time: books consolidate, markets lift balances, and a firm that pays its biggest producers to stay can post asset growth while the roster shrinks. A 300% payment over a sunset period is a recruiting package paid by the incumbent, and it competes for the same advisors the independent channels are writing offers to.

For Wells Fargo, $1.3 billion is a routine week. PWD's records have FiNet adding a $545 million team in late August and a run of smaller hires through September, and the affiliate channel is the low-cost way to absorb that traffic: Ascend folds the group into an existing practice, and FiNet supplies the capabilities and solutions Tyers cited, so an incoming team does not have to assemble a stand-alone operating stack the week it changes employers; the breakaway has become a rounding error beside the team trade, and what changes hands here is a group that had already decided to leave a wirehouse and had already chosen a platform.

Whether the Cullman/Holt move is the tail of UBS's advisor problem or its middle remains unsettled, but the headcount line has yet to follow the asset line. The seven people who ran $1.3 billion from Upper Arlington now work through an affiliate in Dublin, Ohio, and the number of advisors UBS has to replace is three higher than it was.