Financial advisors David Baland and Liatriz “Lia” Levy have partnered with San Diego-based Concurrent Advisors to join Raymond James Financial Services (RJFS), the firm’s independent advisor channel headquartered in St. Petersburg, Fla.,Raymond James announced.
Concurrent Advisors is an advisor-owned partnership of independent practices affiliated with RJFS.
Based in Albuquerque, N.M., Baland and Levy operate their independent practice under the name Old Town Advisors, which was formerly affiliated with Merrill Lynch, where the duo managed about $300 million in client assets. Together with client relationship manager Amanda Burrows, the Old Town team serves a clientele of business owners, families, individuals, retirees, women investors, and non-profit organizations.
Baland, who holds a degree in economics from New Mexico State University, began his career at Morgan Stanley in 1991. He had been with Merrill Lynch more than 12 years before he and Levy decided they needed to find a new affiliate partner.
“In our due diligence process, we searched for the partnership that would provide the most autonomy to serve our clients as we see fit,” he said in the news release. “After 30 years of working with clients, I’m eager to offer them the independent experience under Concurrent Advisors through Raymond James, which is structured entirely around wealth management.”
A journalism major at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Levy has over two decades of financial services industry experience. She started her career at Financial Network Investment Corporation before joining Banc of America Securities LLC, the investment banking subsidiary of Bank of America, which merged with Merrill Lynch after that firm’s acquisition in 2008 to become Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
In the news release, Levy described why both she and Baland chose to affiliate with Concurrent and Raymond James.
“We were drawn to the off-Wall-Street perspective of Raymond James, with its values that provide a forum for advisors to serve their clients,” she said. “We can now take ownership of our practice and spend our time, effort and energy creating and monitoring investment portfolios and wealth management plans for our clients.”
Raymond James Financial Services Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Raymond James Financial Inc., a diversified financial services company with total client assets of $1.19 trillion worldwide.