The original Dover Advisors team of (left to right in back) Jess Ellington, Tracy Gregory and John Mason Antrim, and (left to right front) Maxwell Wallace and Ned Abbe. (Photos courtesy Dover Advisors)
A year after breaking away from a local bank to launch their own firm, an investment advisory group is already on the move.
Dover Advisors last month expanded to Atlanta with the recruitment of Bruce Faurot, a veteran advisor who had been with industry giant Janney Montgomery Scott for 20 years and Deutsche Bank prior to that.
The addition brings with it around $70 million in client assets and takes Dover Advisors to nearly $300 million in assets under management, according to President Jess Ellington.
Bruce Faurot
That’s nearly three times the $100 million in assets the firm launched with in mid-2022 when Ellington and a trio left Atlantic Union Bank’s wealth management division to strike out on their own.
“Our organic growth since breaking away from Atlantic Union Bank has been really strong, but there’s also kind of a movement in our industry for wirehouse brokers to go independent. It’s happening at a rapid pace,” Ellington said.
He was referring to what he said is a trend among investment advisors looking to leave larger firms, often called wirehouses, for smaller independent firms like Dover. Examples of some of those larger firms include Merrill Lynch and Raymond James.
With Faurot already on board from Janney, Ellington said other such efforts are in the works.
“We’re working on quite a few others,” Ellington said, including in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
Ellington said the trend is driven by advisors wanting to be able to offer more customized investment strategies to clients, rather than the larger brokerages’ proprietary products.
“Independence means more customization,” he said. “There’s more of a benefit of them to offer boutique services over the larger environment.”
Dover Advisors is headquartered at 2235 Staples Mill Road, across from Libbie Mill Midtown. It represents generally high-net-worth clients, including families, individuals, business owners, trusts and foundations.
Jess Ellington
The firm is now up to a team of six and Ellington said it expects to have new additions similar to Faurot by the first half of next year.
From there, it has larger goals in mind.
“The target is a billion,” Ellington said, adding that they hope to hit $1 billion in client assets under management in the next 2 to 5 years from both internal growth and via acquisition of teams from other firms.
And Ellington said industry trends are looking favorable for attracting talent from larger competitors and hitting that goal.
“The trend’s accelerating in our favor,” he said. “It’s pretty much a one-way move of people out of the large wirehouses or banks and going independent.”
He said private equity investors are backing independent firms to help fuel their growth, but that Dover has no plans to take on investors from that realm.
“We’re not going that route,” he said.
Meanwhile, Faurot’s old firm, Janney, is expanding in the Richmond market with a West End office to complement its downtown outpost.
And locally based Heritage Wealth Advisors recently expanded to Charlottesville with the acquisition of Mangham Associates, adding around $800 million in client assets to its base of $3.2 billion in assets under management.
The original Dover Advisors team of (left to right in back) Jess Ellington, Tracy Gregory and John Mason Antrim, and (left to right front) Maxwell Wallace and Ned Abbe. (Photos courtesy Dover Advisors)
A year after breaking away from a local bank to launch their own firm, an investment advisory group is already on the move.
Dover Advisors last month expanded to Atlanta with the recruitment of Bruce Faurot, a veteran advisor who had been with industry giant Janney Montgomery Scott for 20 years and Deutsche Bank prior to that.
The addition brings with it around $70 million in client assets and takes Dover Advisors to nearly $300 million in assets under management, according to President Jess Ellington.
Bruce Faurot
That’s nearly three times the $100 million in assets the firm launched with in mid-2022 when Ellington and a trio left Atlantic Union Bank’s wealth management division to strike out on their own.
“Our organic growth since breaking away from Atlantic Union Bank has been really strong, but there’s also kind of a movement in our industry for wirehouse brokers to go independent. It’s happening at a rapid pace,” Ellington said.
He was referring to what he said is a trend among investment advisors looking to leave larger firms, often called wirehouses, for smaller independent firms like Dover. Examples of some of those larger firms include Merrill Lynch and Raymond James.
With Faurot already on board from Janney, Ellington said other such efforts are in the works.
“We’re working on quite a few others,” Ellington said, including in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
Ellington said the trend is driven by advisors wanting to be able to offer more customized investment strategies to clients, rather than the larger brokerages’ proprietary products.
“Independence means more customization,” he said. “There’s more of a benefit of them to offer boutique services over the larger environment.”
Dover Advisors is headquartered at 2235 Staples Mill Road, across from Libbie Mill Midtown. It represents generally high-net-worth clients, including families, individuals, business owners, trusts and foundations.
Jess Ellington
The firm is now up to a team of six and Ellington said it expects to have new additions similar to Faurot by the first half of next year.
From there, it has larger goals in mind.
“The target is a billion,” Ellington said, adding that they hope to hit $1 billion in client assets under management in the next 2 to 5 years from both internal growth and via acquisition of teams from other firms.
And Ellington said industry trends are looking favorable for attracting talent from larger competitors and hitting that goal.
“The trend’s accelerating in our favor,” he said. “It’s pretty much a one-way move of people out of the large wirehouses or banks and going independent.”
He said private equity investors are backing independent firms to help fuel their growth, but that Dover has no plans to take on investors from that realm.
“We’re not going that route,” he said.
Meanwhile, Faurot’s old firm, Janney, is expanding in the Richmond market with a West End office to complement its downtown outpost.
And locally based Heritage Wealth Advisors recently expanded to Charlottesville with the acquisition of Mangham Associates, adding around $800 million in client assets to its base of $3.2 billion in assets under management.