A UBS team ran the LPL math and chose Raymond James

Raymond James has hired a UBS Wealth Management USA team in San Francisco that produced around $4 million in annual revenue, according to two sources familiar with the move, and the pair spent two years deciding whether to leave at all before landing in an employee channel.

Jason M. Schlesinger and Jason S. Cheu lead Scientia Wealth Partners; they joined Raymond James' high-net-worth Alex. Brown channel on September 3 with client associate Stephanie Wong, registration records show. The source familiar with their practice says the two began seriously considering a move in 2024 and weighed firms from Rockefeller Financial to LPL Financial. Putting an independent broker-dealer on the table and ending at an employee seat with a high-net-worth brand attached says something at $4 million of production: the platform appears to have outbid the payout grid. It is an inference from the sequence, and any team running the same comparison should test it against its own economics.

Schlesinger, a 28-year industry veteran, and Cheu, 18 years in the business, both arrived at UBS in 2020 from Milwaukee-based Robert W. Baird, where Schlesinger produced about $1.9 million; four years later, they were shopping.

The same September 3 date brought a second San Francisco arrival. John R. Lucas Jr., a 30-year broker who, according to the practice's website, leads an eponymous practice with another advisor and four support staff, also joined Alex. Brown from UBS, producing $1.6 million on $300 million in assets, according to the source close to the move; a source close to his former firm put the assets nearer $150 million. Scientia's book is contested the same way: roughly $600 million according to a source familiar with the practice, closer to $470 million according to a person close to UBS.

In both cases the higher figure comes from the hiring side and the lower from the firm being left, which is the most practical detail here for anyone being sized up: the two September 3 additions total about $5.6 million of annual production, and the assets behind one of them differ by $130 million depending on who is describing them.

Geography explains the appetite. Raymond James executives said last year that the West Coast and the Northeast are its greatest expansion opportunities and could eventually account for half the firm's asset growth; its West Coast market share was below 2% as of 2023, before management was reshuffled and Bert White was named divisional manager that year. The signings have followed: a $5.5 billion Comerica team in Los Angeles in July, a $1.2 billion City National team in Beverly Hills in May. A producer in a region the firm has publicly wagered on, in a market where its share sat under 2%, holds unusual leverage — and that leverage erodes with every team that helps fill in the map.

The traffic runs both directions, and UBS, which has sought to bolster recruiting after an uptick in attrition last year, landed three teams with $2.7 billion in combined assets from Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch last week. As this publication argued when Sierra Ridge's $2.1 billion practice chose Cetera's enterprise channel, the recruiting war now turns on growth infrastructure rather than payout grids, and the firms trading teams are the same firms setting the price for the next one.

For a team holding a term sheet, the number to read hardest is not the headline production figure but the note attached to it. The August arbitration ruling this publication covered, in which a broker two years out of a wirehouse lost his fight over a recruiting loan, is the line item to price before signing.