Albany, N.Y., startup targets disaffected brokers

FWR Staff

12 December 2008

Brokerage veteran J. Wetherbee targets $1 billion in assets in three years. Weatherbee Wealth Management, a new non-clearing securities firm in Albany, N.Y., hopes to attract area wirehouse brokers who may be feeling disillusioned by a financial crisis that has roiled Wall Street and resulted in bankruptcy, mega-mergers and layoffs.

Average producers

The firm aims to support about a dozen registered representatives and have about $1 billion under management by 2012. That would give brokers at the firm average assets under management of about $83.3 million. The 2007 wirehouse average was about $70 million per rep.

Wetherbee Wealth Management will clear trades through Albany-based C.L. King & Associates.

Weatherbee Wealth Management is run by Jeffrey Wetherbee, a veteran branch manager for UBS , Prudential Securities and E.F. Hutton .

Wetherbee was most recently managing director of the NYS Small Business Technology Investment Fund, a New York State-owned venture-capital conduit with a portfolio of about 40 early-stage companies valued at around $30 million. In the 1970s, he owned, operated and eventually sold a plastics manufacturing company. -FWR

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