Bolton Nets Another Merrill Advisor With $120m Client Book

Bolton Global Capital is showing no signs of slowing down its recruitment drive after hiring yet another advisor from Merrill Lynch, Citywire Americas has learned.

The Bolton, Massachusetts-based broker-dealer is continuing its offshore expansion with the hire of Christian Felix from the US wealth management giant’s Coral Gables office in Florida.

He will join other former Merrill advisors in Bolton’s Miami office which so far this year has added advisors managing over $1.2 billion in collective client assets.

Bolton Global also said in its statement that it expects ‘continued robust growth in its business in 2017’. Felix joined Merrill Lynch in 2010 as first vice president in its international wealth complex and managed client assets worth more than $120 million. During his time at Merrill he catered to clients primarily from Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia and Venezuela.

Ecuadorian-born Felix started off his career in 2002 with LloydsBank in Ecuador before later being transferred to Miami. In 2006 he joined Santander Private Bank International as vice president where he remained until joining Merrill Lynch.

New recruits

In October, Bolton Global announced the hire of Ricardo Morean, a 24-year wealth management veteran, as the head of its business development as well as for GEA Capital, a Bolton affiliated advice firm based in Miami.

Morean and Felix’s hire follows a wave of new advisor teams joining Bolton over the last year, with its Miami office adding over nine teams with more than $1.2 billion in client assets since November 2015.

A large portion of these new teams are former Merrill Lynch advisors, which are understood to have left after the US group decided to scale back its global advice unit in July 2015.