Merrill has added a 14-person institutional consulting team from Morgan Stanley’s Graystone Consulting business that oversees more than $13 billion in client assets, according to Barron’s. The team will operate out of Merrill Private Wealth Management’s Boston office and serves ultra-high-net-worth families, corporate executives, entrepreneurs, and retirement plan sponsors across the United States.
The group is led by Al J. Hammond, CRPS, a founding partner with more than 35 years of institutional consulting experience. The team also includes Matthew McLaughlin, among other advisors and support staff. At Morgan Stanley, the group had been based out of the firm’s Boston North Shore office in Middleton, Massachusetts.
The move ranks among the largest wirehouse-to-wirehouse team transfers disclosed in 2026. At $13 billion, it surpasses other major moves tracked this year, including a nearly $6 billion Morgan Stanley team that departed for Wells Fargo Advisors in Manhattan and an 11-person, $2.4 billion team that joined Steward Partners. It trails only the 2025 departure of a 90-advisor group managing $129 billion that left Merrill to form its own RIA affiliated with Dynasty Financial Partners.
The addition follows other recent recruiting wins for Merrill, including a Morgan Stanley advisor managing $1.5 billion in Colorado earlier this year and a UBS team with $460 million in assets in Tennessee in June. Morgan Stanley’s Graystone Consulting business, which the firm inherited through its acquisition of Smith Barney, oversees $747.1 billion in institutional assets as of December 2024 and advises pensions, nonprofits, unions, health plans, and family offices on investment strategies.
