RIA Biz is reporting that Scott D’Alessandro has taken a position at Schwab Advisor Services heading up sales.  He left a similar position at Fidelity in December.  D’Alessandro will head up a team of 8 and focus on the northeast region.  This position was previously held by Tom Cantillon, who is now leads the relationship management team for the NY region.

While at Fidelity, D’Alessandro headed up the sales group that handled RIAs with $500 million or more in AUM; the position was eliminated when Fidelity changed how it structured its sales team.

RIA Biz is reporting that Peter Dorsey is TD Ameritrade Institutional’s new managing director of institutional sales.  He is replacing Tom Nally, who was recently named President of TD Ameritrade Institutional.

Prior to being named to this new position, Dorsey was the director of sales and  responsible for the oversight of TD Ameritrade Institutional’s business development activities on the west coast.

RIA Biz is reporting that Securities America is onboarding Great Plains Financial Group, a team which left Investment Centers of America.  The team currently has approximately $350 million in assets and offers both commission and fee based products.

RIA Biz remarks that this transition is noteworthy because it is one of the first teams to announce joining Securities America since the firm had an issue with an alleged Ponzi scheme and was bought out by Ladenburg Thalmann.

Great Plains Financial Group reportedly made the transition because it felt that Investment Centers of America was too restrictive on its plans to bring over wirehouse teams.  Great Plains Financial Group now plans to recruit new advisers from wirehouses seeking to go independent.

RIA Biz is reporting that a study released by Schwab indicates that three out of four advisers would respond favorably to the prospect of joining an RIA if they were approached by a recruiter.  Kosi Research conducted the survey, which included 201 advisors with at least $10 million in assets (half had $100 million or more), were providing advice to clients for at least two years, were not with an RIA and had no affiliation with Schwab.

According to survey:

• 67% of wirehouse advisors worry about job security and report that added responsibilities make it hard to meet clients’ needs;
• 51% said they find the idea of becoming an RIA appealing;
•  76% expect a continued increase in the number of advisers becoming RIAs; and
• 65% who were under the age of 40 found the idea of becoming an RIA appealing, compared with 43% who were 40 or older.

According to an article in RIABiz, HighTower Advisors LLC recruited James Pupillo, a leader from Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC’s Graystone Consulting unit.

Pupillo joined HighTower on Jan. 20 and represents the company’s first branch office in the Southwest. He is based in Scottsdale, Ariz. and Barron’s lists his team as having $2.6 billion of assets under advisement. Pupillo is joined in the breakaway by directors and partners Brian Hein and David Brasfield.

According to a blog post by Littler Mendelson PC, the National Labor Relation Board’s Office of General Counsel issued three Advice Memorandum that provide guidance employers regarding the use of social media and labor law.

Of the three Advice Memorandum that were published, two came to the same conclusion:  an employee who communicates about work through Facebook but only with family or friends cannot invoke the protections of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to avoid dismissal.

In the first case, an employee of a residential home for homeless individuals with significant mental illness posted facetious comments about residents on her Facebook wall. The employee did not have any coworkers as Facebook friends.  The General Counsel concluded the the employee’s Facebook posts were not protected because the employee was merely communicating with personal friends about work. In addition: (a) her posts did not relate to the terms or conditions of employment; (b) the employee did not discuss her posts with coworkers, and no coworkers responded to them; and (c) the employee was not seeking to induce collective action and her posts were not an outgrowth of collective concerns.

In the second case, a bartender complained through Facebook to his step-sister about his employer’s policy barring him from sharing in tips given to servers.  The General Counsel concluded that even though the post related to the terms of employment, he could not rely on the NLRA to reverse his firing because he did not discuss his post with coworkers and was not seeking to induce collective actions.

In the third case, the General Counsel concluded that an employer could lawfully fire an employee over Facebook posts that expressed only an individual gripe, i.e., the employee’s own “frustration regarding his individual dispute with the Assistant Manager over mispriced or misplaced sale items.” This was also not viewed as a call for collective action even though it appears other co-workers may have commented on the Facebook post.

The article then lists certain protected vs. unprotected types of posts based off these recent Advice Memorandum.

• Protected: When the employee “acting with or the authority of” coworkers (a) “seeks to initiate, induce or prepare for group action,” or (b) “brings truly group complaints to the attention of management.”
• Protected: The employee’s activities are “the logical outgrowth of concerns expressed by the employees collectively.”
• Unprotected: The employee is engaging in activity “solely by and on behalf of the employee himself.”
• Unprotected: The employee’s comments are “mere griping” as opposed to “group action.”