Memo to Morgan Stanley Brokers:
Somebody Out There Wants You

Now that Morgan Stanley has begun clearing its sales force of those 1,000 or more lower-end producers, where will all the brokers go?

One good bet is the BrokerHunter.com Web site, established in 1999 as an Internet matchmaker between job-seeking brokers and broker-seeking securities firms.

“The Morgan Stanley layoffs are good business for us,” BrokerHunter president Steve Testerman told Securities Week in a phone interview from his office in Cumming, Ga. “I just hope [the laid-off brokers] don’t feel they’re being thrown to the wolves”

According to Testerman, once you remove the wirehouses and high-end regionals looking for $400,000-plus producers from the equation, most other firms would be “delighted to find a broker doing $200,000 to $250,000 – even some,” he added, “a surprising $100,000.”

In fact, Testerman said that 80 percent of the 2,000 jobs currently posted on the site are for retail brokers with minimal production levels as low as $100,000. “$150,000 or $200,000 is really great”, he added.

And the names of the firms looking to hire them are not just independents and small broker-dealers. They include American Express, AIG Group, Allstate and Lincoln Financial. “Edward Jones is looking,” Testerman said, “and not even listing criteria.”

It’s no secret that the Merrill Lynches, Morgan Stanleys and Smith Barneys are pursuing high-net-worth brokers to service high-net-worth clients.

Testerman finds the trend rather amusing. “If a firm can’t make money on someone doing under $400,000 a year – if your overhead is so high that you need that much or more – then there’s something funny,” he said. “After all, today, anyplace with a computer can be an office. I think the trend is toward the lower-cost providers, whose model is an office in a strip mall where they can be closer to where the people are. There’s a whole world of other ways of doing business that I believe will be increasing over time.”

Anyway, production figures may not be the only factor determining who gets Morgan Stanley pink slips, according to Mindy Diamond, head of recruiting firm Diamond Consultants in Chester, NJ.

“The criterion is how length of service and experience relate to production,” Diamond explained “They’ll keep a $300,000 producer with just a few years experience, but will get rid of a $120,000 producer who has 20 years experience.”

In fact, Diamond added, Morgan Stanley has extended its “Rising Star” program to the end of the year, in expectation of capturing the young guy with zero-to three-years’ experience and any kind of book who’s in growth mode.” And they’ll pay in excess of 200 percent of trail to get them.

Morgan Stanley may be cutting the size of its incoming training class – according to a recent announcement by CEO John Mack – but “they are looking aggressively to recruit,” Diamond said.

Training, though roundly considered very cost-inefficient, is still available, BrokerHunter has 206 broker trainee ads posted.

“They may not be that giant classes they used to have, but all the traditional firms are still training,” Testerman said. “UBS is the biggest, there’s Merrill Lynch; Edward Jones is placing ads all over the country, and then there are the smaller broker-dealers like Oppenheimer and MetLife.”

Getting back to Morgan Stanley, Diamond expressed strong confidence in the firm’s future under Mack’s leadership. “You’re going to see good things there now,” she said. “He’s the one who initiated the whole Morgan Stanley-Dean Witter merger and his whole initiative is about making that merger work.”

- Nancy R. Mandell
Securities Week

BrokerHunter Facts: BrokerHunter.com is an employment website for jobs within the Securities Industry segment of the Financial Services Industry.

In summary, this is the place for you to find employment, jobs, careers, opportunities, new jobs, permanent jobs, job placement information or a new position within the Securities Industry segment of the Financial Services Industry.

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