Financial Advisor Transition

Sequoia Capital led a $1 billion funding round for Valar Atomics Inc. that the nuclear startup says will help it shift from demonstrating small reactors to producing them in volume.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is vowing to funnel $750 billion into housing over the next decade, nearly 40% more than it has over the past 10 years, as part of Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon’s push to invest more money in US communities.

In the race to win a coveted role on the next mega US IPO and manage the ensuing riches, Wall Street’s wealth advisers are ramping up lending to founders and entrepreneurs based on the soaring values of their private companies.

Investors overwhelmingly recognize the value of financial planning, but a substantial planning gap remains. The desire for guidance is there. Access remains the challenge.

The combination of succession planning — where the lead advisor wants to have a successful and well-funded retirement and the successors want to get paid for taking over — along with the riches of the market over the last few years are all adding up to significant unrest within many teams.

In the coming years, more investors will expect financial planning to be a key part of the services they receive from advisors. To be prepared, advisors will need technology to help streamline added workflows, as well as the expertise of certified financial planners to support their clients long term.

Registered investment advisors (RIAs) are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence (AI) tools that automatically transcribe and summarize client calls. While these technologies may offer efficiency gains, they introduce significant legal and compliance risks. This article discusses the intersection of AI transcription tools with state wiretapping laws, privacy considerations, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requirements, and the evolving litigation landscape.

The global luxury industry, which has been grappling with three years of lackluster sales, may gain some relief as wealth generated by artificial-intelligence companies and their trillions of dollars of initial public offerings finds its way into fancy fripperies.

When clients, specifically, feel they matter to their advisor, they engage more deeply in the planning process, follow through on recommendations, refer more frequently, and build lasting relationships that transcend market volatility.

Blackstone Inc. leaned on Wellington Management Co. and Vanguard Group to create two new funds that will give individual investors access to private assets as it looks to go beyond its roots as a money manager for pensions and institutions to become more of a household name.

to come

President Xi Jinping used the rise of China’s AI models to stake his claim on shaping the technology’s global rules, even as their growing power stirs security concerns in Washington and Beijing alike.

Apple Inc. is again the biggest company in the world after wresting the title from Nvidia Corp., which has held it since May 2025.

As prediction markets draw record trading around events like the World Cup, Jump Trading Group is betting the once-niche contracts are becoming a lasting corner of Wall Street.

The labor gap is creating pressure on firms to do more with their existing teams, and AI is giving those teams the tools to actually do it. Here is how firms achieve double-digit growth using AI, even while navigating a workforce transformation they cannot fully control.

For this week’s column, in the wake of the holiday celebrating our country’s independence, I’ll share some independent thinking for advisors to implement, whether it be with their teams, in their practice or with their clients. I’ll keep it brief in the hopes you will find one or two things that resonate.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. trounced its own Wall Street stock-trading records, posting $7.42 billion for a quarter that saw indexes rip higher and ongoing market volatility around artificial intelligence and war in the Middle East.

The Federal Aviation Administration is resurrecting the dream of passengers flying faster than the speed of sound after it recently proposed lifting a ban on supersonic flights over land, which has been in place for more than five decades.

After years of working with advisors and studying client behavior, the reasons clients leave come down to three core patterns. They are predictable. They are preventable. And they almost always trace back to a conversation that never happened in the first meeting.

I have spent the better part of my career watching how organizations manage access to sensitive data — who has it, who should have it, and how long it takes anyone to notice when those two things stop matching. In financial services, that gap tends to be measured in months.

Steven Pinker's latest book digs into why the knowledge we hold in common matters and how it helps society operate more smoothly.

The US industrial robot industry is characterized by low growth and highly customized projects. Artificial intelligence holds out the hope to change that, especially when it comes to robots that can move and work safely around humans.

With the artificial intelligence race moving so rapidly, even a momentary lag can be costly. Alphabet Inc.’s Google is learning this the hard way: The search giant rapidly caught up with

The firms that operate rigorous vendor evaluation will compound two advantages simultaneously: They buy the right tools now, and their advisors trust them when the next generation of AI arrives. In a decade that will be defined by the industry's capacity to do more with fewer people, that trust is a strategic asset.

Acquiring a book of business is one of the fastest ways an independent advisor can grow AUM, expand a client base, and build long-term enterprise value. It is also one of the most financially consequential decisions you will ever make — and most advisors approach it underprepared.

At the start of the regional war in February, Wall Street banks were grappling with the prospect of a protracted slowdown in the Middle East. Three months in, many firms are rushing to add bankers after local investors largely looked past the conflict and doubled down on dealmaking.

Meta Platforms Inc. is developing plans for a cloud infrastructure business that will sell access to AI computing power and models, setting up a new vector of competition with industry leaders like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

If your heart and mind tell you to go looking for someone older because that’s going to fit your culture more effectively, by all means search in that direction. Just don’t give up on younger, next-generation team members without making sure you have given them every opportunity to succeed.

Markets will continue to shift. Headlines will change. Volatility will come and go. What endures is the value of having a thoughtful, well-constructed plan. Planning creates structure during uncertain periods and helps clients stay focused on long-term goals instead of short-term noise.

European firms in critical sectors like nuclear energy and quantum computing are flocking to the US, despite efforts by European authorities and bourses to make the region’s markets more appealing and accessible.

That gap — between believing you are excellent and being able to prove it — is the central problem this article addresses. And solving it is precisely what “The 80/20 Manifesto” was written to do.

I have run sales teams, developed sales teams, trained salespeople and trained advisors for many years. Education is your best bet, but if people are focused on growth at all costs, sometimes they aren’t in a position to really listen.

For much of the past decade, secondary funds served as the default entry point into private equity for a number of wealth managers, registered investment advisors, and institutional allocators. These investment vehicles allowed investors to acquire exposure to a private equity fund by purchasing the interest of one of its existing primary investors.

Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman proclaimed a wizard for guiding a then-record US economic expansion, only to see his luster dimmed by the financial crisis that erupted less than two years after he stepped down, has died. He was 100.

I was asked by an advisory firm to speak to their clients at their recent client event. I was able to share the “Five Secrets of Human Behavior,” and all attendees received my similarly named book. In today’s column, I’ll outline these secrets and share why they matter from a leadership perspective.

Compliance risks happen when AI-enabled workflows expand faster than their governance model. It becomes a blind spot when AI solutions are built faster than the organization’s ability to map them against the right regulatory, operational, and data-governance controls.

SpaceX shares jumped on Tuesday, putting the firm on track to overtake Amazon.com Inc. as the fifth largest publicly traded company in the world just days after its blockbuster debut.

JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s public finance department hired a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker to specialize in prepay energy deals, marking a major hire for the team as the firm ramps up its work in the sector.

Things change fast in artificial intelligence. One minute corporate desk jockeys are competing to use AI coding and reasoning tools as much as possible, the next their bosses are complaining about budgets being pulverized and start rationing usage.

The jury is still out on whether SpaceX is primarily a rocket company, as its name suggests, or actually more of a telecom provider or artificial intelligence play. Its expected valuation doesn’t help resolve the confusion.

The initial public offering for SpaceX is poised to generate billions of dollars in profits for the fortunate few investors who got in early on Elon Musk’s rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence company.

The biggest problem I find is that advisors don’t have the time they need to focus on growth. Sending out a mass invite via LinkedIn is fast and easy, but it doesn’t mean it is the most effective action you can take.

With a new boss at the helm and expectations of billions in surplus gas revenue, the Qatar Investment Authority spent the past year telegraphing a step-up in dealmaking. Iran’s attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure and Doha’s inability to ship products risk hampering that push.