Hy Cohen, who led the brokerage firm from 1994 to 2001, passed away on March 20 after a lengthy illness.

Cohen was one of a handful of executives who rebuilt Royal Alliance in the early 1990s after its parent, Integrated Resources, went bankrupt in 1989. In January 1990, billionaire Eli Broad acquired it along with three other Integrated businesses for an estimated $170 million.

Integrated had been a giant in the real estate limited partnership business that was decimated after the tax reform act of 1986 eliminated many deductions for real estate investments.

Integrated later became part of a series of acquisitions by Broad that led to the creation of SunAmerica, which would become one of the nation's high-growth financial services companies as it expanded its variable annuities and asset management operations. In 1998, Broad sold it to AIG for $16.5 billion.

Working in the early 1990s with then-Royal Alliance CEO Gary Krat, investment research and due diligence chief Mark Goldberg, Art Tambaro in operations and Sarah Marks in marketing, Cohen helped rebuild the firm after it had shrunk from 5,000 to 1,300 reps. Cohen became president in 1991 and CEO in 1994 after Krat was promoted to run the fast-growing SunAmerica broker-dealer network. By 1995, Royal had 3,000 reps. Today, Royal Alliance is the largest brokerage among the AIG group of broker-dealers.

"He was in many ways responsible for resurrecting a company, that but for his efforts, would probably not exist today," said Goldberg, who succeeded Cohen as CEO in 2001 and is now chairman of Carey Financial.

"He was fearless, competitive, decisive, and above all loyal to his friends. He also had a playful side to him. He was creative, self-deprecating and loved to make people laugh."

Cohen and Goldberg were also among a small group of custodian and B-D executives—including Todd Robinson and Jim Putnam at LPL Financial Services, Tony Greene at Raymond James and John Philip Coghlan at Charles Schwab—who built the asset management platforms that would service the nascent but fast-growing RIA and hybrid broker-dealer businesses that came to dominate today's independent advisor business.