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Mike Schroepfer
A Facebook's CTO has joined the board of directors at a robo-advisor (RIABiz)
"Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's chief technology officer, joined Wealthfront's board of directors in November. That's on top of the earlier hires of Facebook's former design chief, Kate Aronowitz, as Wealthfront's new vice president of design," reports Kelly O'Mara. "Alison Rosenthal, another former executive of the Silicon Valley social media giant, came on in October 2014 as Wealthfront's vice president of strategic partnerships."
"We have big plans for the scale of our future business and can't imagine a better advisor than someone like Schrep [Schroepfer], who has helped scale a service that reaches more than one billion people every day," wrote CEO Adam Nash in the announcement.
Raymond James will buy Deutsche Bank's US wealth management business (Financial Planning)
Both Raymond James and Deutsche Bank confirmed that the former will buy the latter's US wealth management business, and will operate the boutique with the name it originally used when it was founded back in 1800, Alex. Brown, reports Ralph R. Ortega.
"As part of the deal, Haig Ariyan, co-head of wealth management in the Americas for Deutsche Asset & Wealth management, will join Raymond James as president of the Alex. Brown division. Other members of the Deutsche Bank unit will also join, Raymond James said," reports Ortega. "Terms of the deal were not released."
Doctors have a hard time saving for retirement due to insane medical school debt (Think Advisor)
Fidelity Investments found that 48% of physicians in the US were saving at an average rate below what is recommended, 48% were not maxing out their contributions to a qualified workplace plan, and 71% were not contributing to a non-qualified retirement plan, reports Michael S. Fischer.
"Even though physicians on average earn $300,000 annually, based on Fidelity's business data, industry research showed that 84% carried medical school debt averaging more than $176,000. Not only that, but many practitioners were strained by heavy practice-related costs," notes Fischer.
There are still some good things about Malaysia (Advisor Perspectives)
Malaysia's currency weakened to levels not seen since the Asian financial crisis, there are issues with corruption, and the country is a net exporter of commodities. So this year hasn't been great. Plus, the continued uncertainty over the Fed's rate hike decision has add to global uncertainty and volatility, which hasn't helped.
That being said there are some good things, writes Mark Mobius of Franklin Templeton Investments: 1) Japan's continued quantitative easing should be good for ASEAN countries, including Malaysia. 2) Malaysia's orientation towards consumers, which is "aided by a youthful demographic and a burgeoning middle class that has growing income to spend on discretionary goods."
"As a growing nation, Malaysia still has room for improvements and its people are realizing reform is needed, and that is good news, in our view," he added.
"If you want to make money in the financial advisory business, don't be a financial adviser" (InvestmentNews)
"If you want to make money in the financial advisory business, don't be a financial adviser. Instead, try working your way up the ladder at one of the handful of trade groups that serve the industry, where pay for CEOs can easily exceed $500,000," writes Mark Schoeff Jr.
By comparison, lead advisors make a median $148,380 and chief executives make about $410,000, according to the 2015 InvestmentNews Adviser Compensation and Staffing Study, reports Schoeff.