By Kenneth Corbin
Wells Fargo Advisors has welcomed back a former financial advisory team that had previously decamped for Ameriprise, where they oversaw more than $550 million in assets. Advisors Thomas Hughes and Bill Steele joined Wells Fargo on Tuesday in a move the brokerage firm announced Thursday.
The team, based in Southlake, Texas, also includes Betty Cadena, a senior registered client associate.
Ameriprise didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the departure.
The practice oversees assets for families, high-net-worth individuals, trusts, and advises a few small businesses on their retirement plans. It produced annual revenue of $1.77 million at Ameriprise, according to Wells Fargo.
The move is the latest in a series of recruiting wins for Wells Fargo, both for its traditional brokerage channel, which Hughes and Steele have joined, but also for FiNet, its independent advisory channel.
Some of its notable recent recruiting successes have included a $6 billion team it lured away from Morgan Stanley, a $6.3 billion team from UBS (along with at least two other $1 billion-plus teams from the Swiss bank), and a $1.4 billion Merrill Lynch team.
The most recent addition is led by a pair of long-time industry veterans. Steele first registered as a broker in 1990 with Fidelity Brokerage Services, according to the online database BrokerCheck. After a few short stints he landed at Morgan Stanley in 1997 and jumped to Wells Fargo in 2004, remaining there until 2017, when he joined Ameriprise.
Hughes first registered as a broker in 1998 with PaineWebber. In 2000, he joined Prudential Securities, jumped to Wells Fargo in 2003 and then to Ameriprise in March 2017 at the same time as Steele.
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May 28, 2026 14:55 ET (18:55 GMT)
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