The latest moves in senior wealth management from across the US.

Wells Fargo, Abbot Downing
Wells Fargo has appointed behavioral finance expert Michael Liersch to the newly-created role of head of advice and growth strategies for private wealth management. He will be based in New York City.

Liersch will lead a newly combined team responsible for delivering planning services and growth strategies for clients of Wells Fargo Private Bank and Abbot Downing. The team also includes the business’s comprehensive family dynamics, as well as family and business history services, Wells Fargo said in a statement yesterday. 

Prior to this, Liersch worked as managing director and global head of wealth planning and advice at JP Morgan. Before that, he was head of behavioral finance and goals-based consulting at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, and was head of behavioral finance at Barclays Wealth, Americas. He was also a faculty member at New York University, where he taught management and organizational analysis.

Liersch received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University and a doctoral degree in cognitive psychology from University of California, San Diego. He is a published author in behavioral finance and a frequent media contributor.

Advisor360°
Wealthtech software company Advisor360° has made four hires: Meredith Crouse as senior vice president, chief people officer, Doug Wood as senior vice president, customer success and operations, Gilad Sade as vice president, engineering development, and John Considine as vice president, solutions architect.

As chief people officer, Crouse will lead the company’s human resources strategy and functions, including talent acquisition, talent management, learning and development, employee relations, organizational design, HR systems, and total rewards. Crouse brings over 20 years of HR experience.

Wood will be responsible for improving the Advisor360° client experience, heading up a team that supports internal and client-facing operations and infrastructure. Prior to joining Advisor360°, Wood served as product director at Lucent Technologies, he was a founding VP at Pirus Networks (acquired by Sun Microsystems) and an SVP/co-GM at EMC Corporation. 

Sade will lead Advisor360°’s engineering development team and report to chief technology officer, Jed Maczuba. Prior to joining Advisor360°, Sade had various roles at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, where he was most recently VP of engineering.

Considine will be responsible for driving architecture and innovation to advance the Advisor360° platform. Previously, he was GM of Cloud Infrastructure Services at IBM, chief technology officer at Verizon Terremark, founder and CEO of the enterprise cloud computing startup CloudSwitch, and director of engineering at Sun Microsystems. 

Advisor360º was founded in April 2019 as a wholly independent spin-out of Commonwealth Financial Network, the US independent broker-dealer.

Kilpratric Townsend & Stockton
Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, the investment house, has appointed Michael J Cochran as a partner, based in Atlanta, Georgia. Cochran will be a member of the firm's corporate department and co-chair its private equity team.

Prior to this, Cochran was at Dentons, where he previously served as chair of the US corporate practice. 

Cochran's practice is primarily focused on private equity and venture capital with a concentration on mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, and distressed transactions. Cochran also acts as a strategic advisor to clients with respect to a variety of financial, business, and legal issues. His experience crosses a number of industries, including life sciences and biotechnology, financial services, healthcare, industrial services, telecommunications, home furnishings, home textiles, and media. 

Arsenal Capital Partners
Arsenal Capital Partners, the private equity firm investing in specialty industrials and healthcare companies, has made a number of senior appointments.

Aaron Wolfe is joining the firm as an investment partner. Wolfe will be part of the senior leadership of Arsenal's specialty industrials team and will join its investment committee. Wolfe comes to Arsenal from Sun Capital Partners where he most recently served as an MD and head of Sun Capital Partners' New York office. 

John DiGiovanni, having joined the firm's healthcare team in 2018, has been promoted from principal to investment partner; he serves on the boards of two Arsenal healthcare companies, Accumen and Hopebridge.

Dr John Mattison, who has been functioning as an Arsenal senior advisor, has joined the firm's healthcare team as an operating partner and chief medical information officer. Previously, Dr Mattison was chief medical information officer for the Southern California Region of Kaiser Permanente, in which capacity he helped support the growth of one of the nation's leading integrated healthcare institutions.

Since its inception in 2000, Arsenal has raised institutional equity investment funds of $5.3 billion, completed over 45 platform investments and achieved over 30 realizations. 

Seventy2 Capital Wealth Management
Seventy2 Capital Wealth Management, based in the Washington DC and Baltimore area, has appointed Andrew Hahn, CFP® as a vice president and financial advisor. 

Hahn is another former wirehouse figure to have joined the firm. He has spent nearly 19 years assisting clients in pursuing their financial goals. Before this role, Hahn was at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, where he spent 13 years, and before that, at UBS Wealth Management. 

Before entering the wealth advisory space, Hahn started and ran several businesses in printing, publishing and IT.