A $129 billion breakaway obscures the week's real story

PWD counted $133.8 billion in advisor-team moves this week, the largest weekly total on record. One blockbuster deal made it so: the $129 billion Merrill Lynch institutional breakaway. Strip that out and the remaining flow was a steady, mid-market exodus out of employee channels toward firms beyond the wirehouse core. No team in that residual group reached $900 million.

The $129 billion move was Merrill's Global Corporate and Institutional Advisory Services group going to OpenArc. That single breakaway accounts for 96% of the week's dollar volume. The remaining $4.8 billion sat across the rest of the moves. None of those deals crossed $900 million.

The biggest of those smaller moves came from Commonwealth Financial Network. A nine-advisor team led by Sean Montgomery, Scott Miller, and Matt Dupon took $900 million to Merit Financial Advisors in Pasadena, California. Commonwealth also lost a second team when Jim Tucker and Patrick Bria moved a $420 million book to Cetera Financial Group in Durham, North Carolina. Two departures from the same firm in one week.

Insurance-owned firms lost ground as well. Kent Voges and Matt Roberts left Corebridge Financial, once Valic Financial Advisors, for Frontline Investment Advisors in Tampa with $350 million. The two-advisor move was another step out of a captive channel and into an independent RIA.

Stifel and Wells Fargo each lost a team to Raymond James & Associates. Michael Rose took a two-advisor, $316 million group from Stifel to Raymond James in Lafayette, Indiana. In Deerfield, Illinois, Abby Stancik and Julie Sabransky moved their two-advisor, $200 million Wells Fargo team to the same firm. PWD's tracking also shows an unnamed Wells advisor joining Raymond James, and Patrick Larkin leaving Wells for Oak Hill Wealth Advisors. Raymond James keeps absorbing the employee-channel exits that wirehouses and regionals are losing.

Kevin McGarry took a $275 million book from Valley Financial Group to Hightower Advisors in Ambler, Pennsylvania. His move fits the same direction: a small team with an established book heading to a platform with more latitude.