RBC expands fee-based consulting-service platform

FWR Staff

18 June 2009

Value manager Riverfront gets thumbs up from Canadian bank's U.S. brokerage. RBC Wealth Management U.S. has added year-old Riverfront Investment Group to the roster of separately managed account managers on its consulting-service platform. Richmond, Va.-based Riverfront hails the win as another step toward having solid partnerships with a "select group" of big distributors.

"RBC Wealth Management is one of the premier financial-service firms in the world," says Riverfront's chairman and chief investment officer Michael Jones. "They are respected for their open-architecture philosophy of offering best-in-class solutions to their growing group of professional financial consultants."

Way out

RBC Wealth Management took a hard look at Riverfront's people, processes and investment performance and conducted extensive on-site due diligence to ensure that asset manager's operational and risk-management infrastructure was up to snuff before giving it the nod.

Ann Senne, head RBC Wealth Management's Investment Advisor Group, says the decision came down in Riverfront's favor in part because of "the success this team has had working together for a number of years."

In April 2008, Jones, Rod Smyth and Doug Sandler left Wachovia Securities (now part of Wells Fargo Advisors) joined with Pete Quinn, another former Wachovia professional, to found Riverfront. Two months later, 10 more ex-Wachovians joined them. Since then its assets under management have gone from less than $2 million to more than $800 million.

"We have been blessed with exceptional asset flow this year thanks to our partnership with a select group of premier financial-service firms," says Quinn, Riverfront's COO. "Our portfolios have performed well against their benchmarks and our operational infrastructure has allowed our growth to be seamless."

Riverfront, a value manager that doesn't mind making tactical concessions to market trends, is majority-owned by its employees. Its minority investors include Milwaukee-based brokerage Baird and Richmond-based alternative manager Private Advisors.

RBC Wealth Management is a subsidiary of Toronto-based Royal Bank of Canada. It has more than 4,000 financial consultants, advisors, private bankers and trust officers in Canada, the U.S., Latin America, Europe and Asia. Last year it had nearly $450 billion in assets under administration and more than $220 billion in assets under management.

The U.S. arm of RBC Wealth Management -- formerly RBC Dain Rauscher -- operates from more than 200 locations in 43 states. -FWR

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