A $6 million payout puts Forbes' advisor rankings under a cloud
The New York Times reported that Forbes fired its top editor over an undisclosed payment from Shook Research's founder — a story advisors who market themselves on the list can't ignore.
The rankings badge has become a vulnerable piece of an advisor's marketing kit. Forbes' list of top wealth advisors, produced with Shook Research since 2016, shows up on websites, in email signatures and in client decks. The New York Times reported that Forbes fired its chief content officer, Randall Lane, over a material and undisclosed payment from Shook Research's founder, according to RIABiz. RIABiz notes the rankings have brought enormous revenue to both firms; that is why the disclosure hit the RIA community as hard as it did.
Shook Research has moved to contain the fallout. New CEO Molly Bennard emailed affected advisors with six bullet points, a note RIABiz reviewed, calling the Times article a 'non-event.' She confirmed the payment and the firing, and said the two people involved are long gone and did nothing wrong — at least where advisor rankings are concerned. The founder stepped back from day-to-day involvement in June, and Bennard came in with a new executive team.
The email's framing is strategic but incomplete. A personnel matter is one thing; the credibility of a product is another. Advisors now face a practical test: does a badge that cost Forbes its top editor still function as a marketing credential?
Rankings are sales collateral
RIABiz's commentary acknowledges what the public has long accepted: business publications need side businesses to survive. A $6 million payment from the person who runs the list to the publication's top editor is a different matter entirely. It makes explicit what the 'best of' format always obscured — the list is a product, and the people producing it have commercial relationships. None of that makes any rating fraudulent. It does mean the independent-verdict framing requires more trust than the record now supports.
The deeper problem is methodological, and the Times article landed in the middle of a ratings system that has insisted on its own legitimacy. No researcher, however well-trained, can objectively prove which advisor delivers the best 'wellness' to clients. A magazine that outsources that judgment is lending its impartial brand to a necessarily partial call.
The New York Times can raise these questions partly because its business model does not depend on endorsing advisors, as RIABiz's Brooke's Note points out. The trade publications and research firms that hold the 'best of' franchise have no such luxury — credibility is all they have to sell. An email with six bullet points does not restore it.
Advisors should treat this as a moment to audit their marketing materials. Anyone who uses the badge should be ready for a new question from a sophisticated prospect: who paid for the list, and what did the judge know? The credible answer will cite methodology and disclosure, not just the logo.
None of this proves that anyone on the current list failed to earn the spot. The burden of proof has shifted, though. A credential that once looked like an independent verdict now carries a question — who paid the judge? — that may never be answered to anyone's satisfaction. Shook's CEO calls the episode a non-event, and the firm may believe it. But the list's value was always the halo, and halos are expensive to restore once six million dollars changes hands.