A decade ago, a series of scandals began exploding around Wells Fargo, tarnishing the bank's reputation and leading to investigations by regulators. In their wake, the bank's wealth management unit suffered an exodus of financial advisors. In recent years, however, Wells Fargo appears to have made a turnaround, seeing annual increases in its advisor ranks across channels. Now the bank says 2026 could be its strongest recruiting year ever.
Among other most-read wealth management articles this week:
The rising cost of "I do." Tying the knot is becoming ever more expensive. Wedding-related spending has increased 8.5% year over year so far in 2026, according to Bank of America payments data. Inflation is playing a role, but so is social media: A majority of respondents to a BofA survey said the era of digital connections and scrolling has introduced additional expenses, such as hiring content creators to capture and share the special day.
Merrill reels in a whopper . Bank of America's Merrill Lynch unit recruited a heavyweight financial advisor team from rival Morgan Stanley's Graystone Consulting unit. The 14-person group, which is based in Boston, managed $13 billion in client assets at Graystone for a mix of retail and institutional clients. The team was called Boston North Shore Group at Morgan Stanley but will rebrand at Merrill. Morgan Stanley declined to comment on the departure.
Private markets need more transparency . Wall Street is trying to expand access to private markets to a larger portion of the population. Guest columnist Kirsten Wegner, who leads the Index Industry Association, says that as American companies have remained private for longer, investors who limit their portfolios to publicly traded securities can miss out on significant growth. Yet as more investors look to private markets, Wegner writes that "they need reliable ways to compare opportunities, weigh performance, and gauge risk -- the kind of common frame that indexes and benchmarks have long provided in public markets."
UBS sees more advisors leave . Switzerland's biggest bank reported solid growth in second-quarter earnings, revenue, and wealth management assets, but the earnings report revealed a decline in financial advisors in the Americas. UBS says it ended the second quarter with 5,644 advisors in the region, down 2% from the 5,773 it reported a year ago.
Corient continues its acquisition spree . Corient, the U.S. wealth arm of Canada's CI Financial, is acquiring Seven Bridges Advisors, a New York-based registered investment advisor firm with $4.9 billion in assets under management. The deal follows Corient's purchase of several other large wealth management companies in the U.S. and Europe this year. Toronto-based CI Financial made a splash at the start of the decade by launching an aggressive push into the U.S., although that effort later stalled over concerns about its debt load. After a division of an Abu Dhabi sovereign-wealth fund bought CI in 2024 it resumed its expansion.
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