Aretec, the parent holding company for Cetera Financial Group, a network of independent broker-dealers, has completed the formation of its Board of Directors with the appointment of three members, Cetera announced Thursday.
The completion of the board is part of the structuring following the reorganization that has taken place since Cetera emerged from the bankruptcy of RCS Capital this spring. Cetera, based in El Segundo, Calif., is the only operating business in the holding company.
The three new directors are Mary Cranston, Robert Dineen and Edmond Walters. They join four others appointed earlier as part of the reorganization process.
Cranston is a retired senior partner and past chair of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, an international law firm. In her eight years as chair of the firm, she took it from a regional California-based company to an international platform. She currently serves on the boards of Visa Inc., The Chemours Company and Myokardia Inc.
Dineen most recently served at Lincoln Financial Network as vice chairman and a member of Lincoln Financial Group’s Senior Management Committee. Previously, he served as CEO of Lincoln Financial Securities Corp. and Lincoln Financial Advisors Corp. Dineen serves on the board of Aegon NV, a Dutch life insurance, pensions and asset management company.
Walters most recently served as CEO of eMoney Advisor, which provides a web-based wealth planning system to over 55,000 financial advisors. eMoney was sold to Fidelity in 2015. Previously, he spent more than 20 years in the financial services industry advising high-net-worth clients, and was a founder of the Wharton Business Group, a financial advisory firm based in Pennsylvania. He currently serves on the board of InsPro Technologies Corp.
The three join the four members of the board who were previously appointed as part of Cetera’s completed reorganization process. They are non-executive Chairman Robert Moore; Michael Kaufman, principal at Redwood Capital Management LLC; David King, managing director at Fortress Investment Group; and Larry Roth, who also serves as CEO of Cetera Financial Group.
Cetera Financial Group’s parent company Chairman Robert Moore says, “With the separation of the CEO and chairman roles, together with the formation of a board that is empowered to make independent decisions, I believe we are leading the way towards serving as a model of corporate governance best practices. This is an approach that we are confident will generate sustainable superior outcomes for all of our stakeholders, including the advisors and institutions we serve.
“Now that our strategic transformation process is complete, giving us a healthy balance sheet in addition to the strong loyalty we continue to enjoy from our advisors and institutions, we are eager to move ahead with our singular focus on empowering the delivery of objective financial advice to individuals across the country,” he adds.
The corporate structure of a separate CEO and chairman and a strong board of directors lends itself to robust discussions that will achieve better outcomes, says Moore.