A team of UBS wirehouse veterans overseeing some $4.8 billion in assets jumped ship Friday to launch their own RIA firm serving ultra-high-net-worth individuals and institutions.

The new firm, NewEdge Wealth, is eventually going to be headquartered in New York, said a spokesperson (the firm is currently in Darien, Conn., for now).

The team, which oversaw $4.8 billion at UBS, includes Jeffrey Kobernick, Robert Sechan, Walter Granruth and John Straus Jr., who all worked at UBS under the umbrella of Turnstone Wealth Management and they took eight other team members with them. The new firm was formed in partnership with fintech company EdgeCo Holdings. EdgeCo also acquired The Private Wealth Partners early in 2020, and this firm will be melded with NewEdge. The new entity hopes to expand the technology suite it offers to high-net-worth individuals. The team serves people with $5 million minimums and are typically handling households with more than $10 million.

Co-founder Kobernick is on the Financial Times’ and Barron’s lists of top advisors. He and Sechan both have director pedigrees at UBS, Lehman Brothers and at Morgan Stanley. Straus said on his bio that his clientele includes corporate executives, entrepreneurs and private equity professionals.

Kobernick’s bio at Turnstone said his principal responsibility was crafting tailored fixed-income portfolios “as well as single stock management and asset management strategies.”    

The spokesperson said that the new firm was formed so the team could expand the services it can offer to its preferred clientele of high-net-worth individuals and institutions, especially technology solutions, so “they can provide more robust services across the board.”

Kobernick said in a statement:

“We took great care in making the decision of who to partner with for this next phase of our business. We found a partner in EdgeCo who could support the way we want to do business for our clients, positioning us to keep up with the evolving landscape, providing the best-in-class solutions for our clients and operating on a true open architecture platform.”