Charlie Bracher has been appointed divisional director at Brewin’s Taunton office. Mr Bracher is being joined by Frank Clark, as an investment manager, and Diane Harding has already joined as an investment assistant. Kim Norman has joined as an administrative assistant;  another administrative assistant is due to join Brewin Dolphin in the next few days.

Brewin Dolphin already employs 21 staff in Taunton, a spokeswoman for the firm told WealthBriefing. The team will also be joined by Bryn Wright, as a divisional director, also from UBS, as soon as he is free to do so, she said.

A UBS spokeswoman told WealthBriefing that the Swiss bank will continue to run wealth management operations out of Taunton. 

UBS has been hit by a number of heavy staff defections recently following massive losses incurred by its investment bank, although earlier this week the Zurich-listed banking and wealth management firm announced it had poached a team of eight private banking staff from PricewaterhouseCooper’s offices in Birmingham.

A report in Financial News, quoting unnamed sources, said the UBS team defecting to Brewin Dolphin had held talks about the possibility of working for new UK wealth management startup Vestra Wealth instead. Vestra, which had poached dozens of UBS client managers, recently was barred by the High Court from soliciting more UBS clients.

Brewin Dolphin has 40 offices across the UK and Channel Islands and about £20 billion under management.