Here is the latest summary of moves in North America wealth management.

Raymond James recruited a trio of financial advisors from Morgan Stanley, where they collectively managed more than $114 million in client assets, to join its Colorado Springs office. Janis Cross, Matthew West and AJ Schultz all joined from the Wall Street giant, where they had $1.13 million in annual revenues. 

Cross kick-started her financial services career in 1997 with Morgan Stanley. West began working in the industry in 2001 with Citigroup/Smith Barney, and became a financial advisor in 2004. He remained with the firm after it was acquired by Morgan Stanley in 2009. Schultz interned with Smith Barney while he attended the University of Colorado, and joined full-time after he graduated with a BS in finance. He became a financial advisor in 2011.

Bellecapital International, the SEC-registered business of Switzerland-based Bellecapital Holding, made two hires for its US team in Zurich. Jared Metzger joined as a portfolio manager from Bank of America while Jeff Sullivan joined on the client side from Credit Suisse.

Metzger began his career as an equity analyst at William O’Neil & Co and then worked at United Universal, focused on private equity transactions. In his most recent role at BoA he was responsible for a portion of the bank’s $600 billion discretionary portfolio. Sullivan’s industry experience includes time spent as a private banker at JP Morgan in Chicago, IL, where he managed private and institutional assets. Before joining Bellecapital International, he was a private banker at Credit Suisse, managing assets for UK resident non-domiciled, and European clients.

Raymond James recruited a financial advisor who previously managed around $375 million in client assets at Wells Fargo Advisors to its new Columbia, South Carolina office. While at Wells Fargo Advisors, Preston Convington commanded annual fees and commissions of more than $2.4 million. Joining him are senior investment portfolio analyst Amanda Simconis and client service associate Lindsey Sisk. The trio operate as the Covington Financial Group of Raymond James.

Covington kick-started his financial services career in 1984 with Smith Barney Harris Upham and nine years later joined Johnson Lane, which was later acquired by Wachovia and subsequently became Wells Fargo. Simconis joined the Covington Financial Group as a consultant in 2013. Sisk has several years' experience as a client associate in the financial services industry.

State Street Global Advisors promoted Cyrus Taraporevala, current global head of product and marketing, to a role overseeing all client-and consulting-facing marketing and product functions for its institutional clients. Prior to joining SSGA in April last year, Taraporevala worked with Fidelity Investments, where he led its retail managed accounts and life insurance and annuities business. Earlier in his career, he also spent stints at BNY Mellon Asset Management and Citigroup Global Investment Management. In total, he has more than 25 years' experience in asset management. 

US-listed SunTrust Banks announced a range of appointments affecting divisions including its private client arm. Mark Chancy was named vice chairman and consumer segment executive, reporting to Rogers.  SunTrust Banks merged the mortgage segment with consumer banking and private wealth management. Chancy, who most recently served as wholesale banking executive, leads this expanded segment.

Mortgage banking executive Dorinda Smith reports to Chancy in his new capacity. Hugh Cummins was named wholesale segment executive, succeeding Chancy and reporting to Rogers. Cummins most recently led the commercial and business banking line of business, and previously led SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, the company's investment banking unit. Thomas Freeman was named efficiency and strategic partnerships executive, reporting to Rogers.  He has been leading consumer banking and private wealth management. He spearheads initiatives to improve SunTrust's efficiency and evaluate further Fin Tech alliances. Jorge Arrieta, general auditor, functionally reports to Rogers, while maintaining his primary reporting relationship to the audit committee of the coard. The company's internal Audit function works closely with business lines and functions to ensure executional excellence.

A senior Goldman Sachs official involved in the bank's dealings with Malaysia's scandal-hit investment fund, 1MDB left the firm. Toby Watson, one of the bank's partners who solicited business from 1Malaysia Development Berhad, departed from the Wall Street giant. Watson headed the Hong Kong branch of a trading desk within Goldman Sachs called Principal Funding and Investing, which participates in complex fundraising.

Three advisors from UBS and Morgan Stanley joined forces to establish Houston, TX-based Icon Wealth Partners. Founding partners Mark McAdams and Steve Schwarzbach (from Morgan Stanley) and Blake Pratz (from UBS) managed around $750 million at their former firms. Also from UBS, Ricardo Mihaly joined as senior director of planning and investments, along with senior client relationship managers Cindy Pickett and Jennifer Moore. Senior client relationship manager Annette Latigue moved over from Morgan Stanley.

New York-based wealth advisory firm Offit Capital appointed Will Dixon as director of portfolio strategy. Prior to joining Offit Capital, Dixon, since 2011, was director of public investments within the investments office at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Prior to that, he was an executive director at UBS, and earlier in his career spent seven years as a senior investment analyst at Tewksbury Capital Management in Bermuda.

PivotalPath, a New York-headquartered consultancy advising clients on more than $7.0 billion of hedge fund assets, appointed Josh Vogelstein Ph.D, a Big Data and machine learning expert, to its advisory board. The advisory board influences the firm’s academic foundations and turns opinions into facts that PivotalPath can put to use to enable investors to get real-time hedge fund information and other data.
Buckley Wealth Management launched as an independent advisory firm in Las Vegas, NV, through Dynasty Financial Partners. Founding partner Brian Buckley left Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, where he previously managed $600 million in client assets, to establish the RIA. His title at Morgan Stanley was executive director, wealth advisor, senior institutional consultant and senior portfolio management director.  

Talara Capital Management, a real asset investment firm with family office clients that develops upstream oil and gas properties, appointed Jeff Gutke as managing director of its private investment leadership team. Gutke was formerly a director at Boston-headquartered Denham Capital, an energy and resources capital equity firm. He also held a position operating assets at ExxonMobil. Gutke has a background in production optimization and has primarily focused on sourcing, managing and exiting oil and gas investments.

Boston-headquartered State Street Global Advisors appointed Olivia Engel to the newly-created role of deputy chief investment officer for its global active quantitative equities (AQE) team. Engel was head of AQE at SSGA for the Asia-Pacific region, and relocated from Australia to Boston to take up her new role in March this year. Before joining SSGA six years ago, she held senior-level investment management roles at GMO, Colonial First State Global Asset Management and Commonwealth Investment Management.