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Who's Moving Where In Wealth Management? - Raymond James, GCW, Other
Editorial Staff
15 October 2019
Alex. Brown The firm, which now has personnel in London, California and New York, works with international clients and invests globally.
Alex. Brown, a division of Raymond James, has brought over client advisor Eric Dexter to a new branch opened in Portland, Maine.
The Portland area is part of Alex. Brown’s Atlantic region, managed by regional director Brett Kellam.
Dexter joins from Wells Fargo, where he managed $250 million in client assets. He has been in the financial services industry for nearly 25 years and serves a diverse clientele, including families, non-profit organizations and private institutions.
“After conducting extensive due diligence on the ground at Alex. Brown in New York and Raymond James in Florida, what started out as an evaluation for our plan B, quickly turned into our plan A,” Dexter said.
GCW
GCW Global Customized Wealth has appointed California-based Tim Babich as a partner. Babich will serve as a member of the firm's investment committee.
In addition to his role at GCW, Babich continues to manage Nexxus Holdings, an investment firm primarily dedicated to managing his personal investments. Babich is also founder and director of the RUNX1 Research Program, a philanthropic grant-funding and advocacy foundation for patients with the RUNX1 Familial Platelet Disorder.
Babich was the founder and chief executive of Fortelus Capital Management, a multi-billion London-based hedge fund focused on special situations and distressed debt. He also founded and was chairman of FCM Bank, a Malta-based online bank which was founded in 2012 and sold to a European payments platform in 2017.
Prior to founding Fortelus Capital Management, Babich was a partner at Silver Point Capital, a Greenwich, Connecticut-based hedge fund.
Pelion Venture Partners
Pelion Venture Partners, an early stage venture capital firm, announced the addition of Jeff Kearl as managing director. Kearl co-founded Stance in 2009 and was its chief executive from inception until joining Pelion this month. Besides his entrepreneurial experience at Stance and other start-ups, Kearl has a track record of angel and venture investing in consumer tech and software.
Stance is known as the brand that reinvented the humble apparel category of socks through ground-breaking design and material science. Kearl, who still serves as Stance's chairman of the board, won the 2019 EY Entrepreneur of the Year award in Orange County, California, and serves on the board of directors of Domo, Scopely, and Just Water.
Prior to Stance, Kearl was the chairman of the board of directors for Skullcandy for over a decade. Kearl was also executive vice president and served on the board of directors at Logoworks, an internet marketplace that was acquired by HP in 2007. Following the acquisition, he ran strategy and new ventures for the Internet group at HP. Kearl has also invested in more than 40 companies including Uber, Coupa, Away, MX, Omniture, Scopely, Lucidchart, Divvy and Domo.
Pelion Venture Partners, which was founded in 1986, is based in Utah and invests in early stage enterprise software companies across the United States. Pelion will open a new location in Southern California. Kearl will be involved in crafting a strategy for start-ups in the region.