LEXINGTON, KY - While many wait for the Wall Street recovery to be felt on Main Street, financial advisory firm Hilliard Lyons has grown so much in recent months that it became too big for its Main Street office.
That's forced a move to Wall Street - the Wall Street in Beaumont Centre - as 14 advisors new to the Louisville-based firm and two veteran Hilliard Lyons advisors opened the firm's second Lexington office on New Year's Eve, according to Sr. VP Steve Grossman.
"The door was open for us to bring in some really, very, very fine advisors that have been in the industry," Grossman said. "All the advisors we brought over have been in business for excess of 25 years." The firm's additions include advisors from UBS, Smith Barney and Wells Fargo.
The Beaumont office and downtown location won't differ on what types of services are offered, just who is offering them. Grossman said Tom Kessinger, a veteran of Hilliard Lyons' Lexington operation will act as the Registered Principal of the new office and is bringing his advising partner Chris Lee and staff to the new location along with Joe Bryant, Gary Detraz, Skip Tillman, Tommy Ogden, Larry Crosthwaite, Scott Duncan, Matt Jones and Meg Detraz. They will be accompanied by Registered Sales Assistants Peggy Morrissey, Dawn Moscoe, Sandy Cummins and Jennie Wooldridge.
"We avoided all the toxic assets that plagued a lot of these Wall Street firms, and what has happened is then they start changing the dynamics of their business in the sense of the way they compensate. They'll start cutting their compensation, be restrictiveÖ and take more haircuts and that happened across the board and number of advisors have just gotten fed up with that and were looking for a place that is more conducive for their clients and for them to actually broaden and grow their practice," Grossman said in explaining how a financial firm could expand in an era of unprecedented contraction.
"A lot of what we've been able to do is the fact that Hilliard LyonsÖ (has) always been a conservatively managed firm, we haven't leveraged our balance sheet for purposes of securities transactions and so we've always been a very conservatively managed organization. We don't have an institutional side of our business, it is very retail oriented," Grossman said.
The firm, founded in Louisville in 1854, has seen growth across its 13 states and 70 branches, Grossman said, but none greater than the growth seen in Lexington in 2009.
The new advisors filled temporary space in their Triangle Center offices while the new space was found and fit-up, Grossman said. The demographics of the Beaumont area were attractive Hilliard Lyons, he said, and seemed to be a natural fit for the firm that began its search for the new offices around four months ago.