As Big Firms Exit Broker Pact, Investors Are Uneasy<br />“Firms leaving the broker protocol is very, very bad for clients,” said Phil Shaffer, the founder<br />and chief executive of Halite Partners, an investment management firm, who left Morgan Stanley last year after 24 years.<br />In the 1980s and ’90s, when an adviser left a wealth management firm — usually to go to a so-called wirehouse, or national brokerage<br />firm — the firm the adviser was leaving would file an injunction in hopes of buying time to persuade clients to stay.<br />“If the best adviser wants to be some place, the clients will make the best decision for themselves,”<br />said Brian P. Hull, head of the client advisory group at UBS wealth management for the Americas.<br />But with two of the largest wealth managers pulling out — Morgan Stanley has some 15,000 advisers; UBS has<br />about 6,500 — an industry agreement most clients have never heard of could have a major effect on them.
