A group of financial planners and stock brokers have broken away from Potter Warburg to form a new financial planning and management services company with D&D Tolhurst.
A group of financial planners and stock brokers have broken away from Potter Warburg to form a new financial planning and management serv-ices company with D&D Tolhurst.
The move follows the departure of several financial planners from Potter Warburg last year.
The latest four to leave – Steven Carroll, John Ham, Alistair Piercy and Nicholas Pike – are now directors of the new company called Tol-hurst Ham & Carroll.
They own 20 per cent of the new company while D&D Tolhurst holds the balance.
Tolhurst Ham & Carroll director Steven Carroll says the breakaway of his group at the end of April follows a move by Potter Warburg to convert from “an elite private client stockbroker to an European styled private bank”.
“We wanted to retain our old working style rather than become private bankers,” he says.
A Potter Warburg spokesperson says the defections do not reflect any diminution of the firm’s commitment to financial planning but a change of direction of the firm..
“Going forward, Potter Warburg is to offer comprehensive wealth man-agement via a fully fledged private banking service,” he says.
“As a division of the largest private bank in the world (UBS), we be-lieve there are obvious advantages of leveraging off that strength to provide these services in Australia.”
Tolhurst Ham & Carroll will specialise in self-managed portfolios, particularly in superannuation, family trusts, investment companies and direct investment securities.
“We are trying to achieve a small company with a personal approach to the financial planning process at a cost-effective level for clients because our overheads will be so low,” says Carroll.
In September last year, several financial planners left Potter War-burg, including three who joined Deutsche Bank Financial Planning. They followed the departure in April last year by former Potter War-burg executive chairman Nigel Stewart, who left to establish an inde-pendent advisory business.
