FINANCIAL ADVISOR INSIGHTS: How to score clients all over the globe

Reuters

Rem Vyakhirev, head of Russia's mighty gas monopoly Gazprom, looks at a globe during an interview with Reuters correspondents April 29. Vyakhirev is studying plans for expanding even further at home and abroad.

Finding new clients abroad (Wealth Management)

Advisors are always looking for ways to add new clients. Global Wealth Management Group has seen overseas assets explode by almost 1,000% since 2010 to $325 million, and they shared some tips with Wealth Management. The firm says it's important to be able to discuss what's happening with their clients, and to do so they read overseas newspapers to stay current. While some advisors have it easy in the sense they are a foreign national or have a spouse that is, others have to start from scratch. The best way to go about it is to focus on one or two nationalities and be patient, Ozgur Karaosmanoglu told Wealth Management. Many of these potential clients have never invested in the US before, so it takes time to educate them about the culture of US investing, as well as tax laws and other intricacies.

There was a leak at the Fed (Business Insider)

The Fed's in-house forecasts for the June FOMC meeting were inadvertently published on its website on June 29. Importantly, the forecasts showed the Fed lowered its Fed Funds forecast for the end of the year to 35 basis points from 50 basis points, suggesting there might only be one rate-hike in 2015. The leak comes as Fed Chair Janet Yellen is under scrutiny for a bigger leak that occurred in September 2012. Back then, Medley Global Advisors reported the Fed was going to increase the size of its quantitative easing program, which eventually came to fruition.

UBS loses another team (Investment News)

Merrill Lynch has poached a four-person team from UBS. The Houston-based squad, led by advisor Will Leven, is taking $1.3 billion in assets under management with them. According to Investment News, UBS has now seen a net outflow of $3.8 billion AUM in just this quarter alone. Tim White, a managing partner of private wealth management at Kaye Bassman, told Investment News, UBS' problems in the space might at least partially be due to it being based outside the United States.

Raymond James' advisor force hits a new high (Financial Planning)

Raymond James said its advisor count increased by 123, or 4%, in the quarter to 6,507. The increase in advisors helped the firm's assets under management grow 5% to $475 billion. Companywide, Raymond James earned $0.93 per share in the quarter.

Former Oppenheimer trio settles penny stock case (Financial Advisor)

In January, Oppenheimer agreed to pay $20 million to settle its portion of a case involving the sale of billions of shares of unregistered penny stocks. Now Oppenheimer's former employees who were involved have settled their cases. Scott A. Eisler, Arthur W. Lewis and Robert Okin have agreed to pay fines ranging from $50,000 to $125,000 and have been barred from specific roles within the industry for one year. According to Financial Advisor, none of the parties involved admitted or denied any wrongdoing.