Hot on the heels of yesterday’s hires in Nevada and Arizona, BNY Mellon Wealth Management has opened its doors in San Diego, CA, and made three more appointments in Chicago, IL.

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s hires in Nevada and Arizona, BNY Mellon Wealth Management has opened its doors in San Diego, CA, and made three more appointments in Chicago, IL.

The new Del Mar office is headed by Paul Thiel, senior director for business development, who reports to Southern California regional president Shannon Kennedy. The move is the latest step in the firm’s expansion in Southern California, having made 25 key hires serving Los Angeles and Orange and San Diego Counties in 2013.

Thiel said the San Diego office represents one of the top wealth markets in the US and is one of the fastest-growing regions for the business. BNY Mellon has six wealth management staff dedicated to San Diego County and the firm plans to hire an additional private banker this year, he added.

Chicago hires

Meanwhile, the firm has appointed Neil Kohler and Michael Castronovo as mortgage bankers in Chicago, while also naming Jennifer Lucas as senior director for business development – a newly-created role – there.

The three appointments are part of a “robust local hiring effort” that has more than doubled the size of BNY Mellon Wealth Management’s Chicago staff over the past two years.

Lucas was latterly a senior vice president at the Chicago office of US Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management, where she had business development, relationship management and team leadership responsibilities. Prior to that, she served for six years at BoA in a different role within its derivatives group. In her new role she will report to regional president Michael DiMedio.

Both mortgage banker appointees report to managing director Erin Gorman, who is head of the firm’s national mortgage sales division.

Kohler, who has 23 years of experience in financial services, was for nearly four years vice president and a private banker with Morgan Stanley. There, he provided residential mortgage and other loan products to financial advisors and their high net worth clients. Prior to that, he served as a senior mortgage consultant in originating and refinancing mortgages with Wintrust Mortgage.

Castronovo has 29 years of experience in financial services, and at two different time periods served as a sales manager with Wells Fargo Private Mortgage Banking for a total of 13 years. In his most recent tenure there, he helped rebuild the Chicago private mortgage banking office. Between 2006 and 2008, he was a private mortgage banker responsible for establishing a new office in Lake Forest for PERL Mortgage.

Yesterday, BNY Mellon WM hired a senior portfolio manager and business development leader in Nevada and Arizona (view here).

The above appointments and office launch is part of BNY Mellon Wealth Management's previously-announced two-year recruiting campaign to increase its sales force by 50 per cent and create other roles in what it views as important US wealth markets.View an interview with the firm's chief executive, Lawrence Hughes, about the initiative here.