J.P. Morgan Advisors Loses a $4.8 Million Houston Team to Rockefeller

A second J.P. Morgan Advisors team in a week has left, this time a $4.8 million Houston practice headed to Rockefeller, while partner Scott Holstead stays behind.

A second J.P. Morgan Advisors practice has walked out in the span of a week. Christopher D. Sheets and Forrest R. Green, Houston advisors whose book held about $700 million, now work for Rockefeller Global Family Office under the name Sage Wealth Partners. Industry coverage on Oct. 23 put the team's yearly revenue near $4.8 million, a figure WirehouseHUB treats as reported rather than audited, and said nine more people came with them, including Sheets' son Cameron.

The exit breaks up a three-partner group. Inside J.P. Morgan, Sheets and Green partnered with T. Scott Holstead under the SGH Group banner, and Holstead, who helped open the bank's Houston wealth office, is not leaving. His BrokerCheck record (CRD 4262752) still shows J.P. Morgan Securities in Houston.

The two departing advisors have changed firms together before. Sheets' BrokerCheck report (CRD 4473602) begins on Jan. 4, 2002, at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in Houston and runs there until Sept. 11, 2018. Green's report (CRD 4856508) opens at the same Bernstein office on Dec. 17, 2004, and closes on that same September 2018 date. Both men picked up J.P. Morgan Securities registrations on Sept. 7, 2018. Neither file lists a customer complaint, regulatory action or any other disclosure. On Friday afternoon BrokerCheck still placed both at J.P. Morgan, which is common in the first days of a transition.

The reported numbers explain why the move clears WirehouseHUB's automatic coverage bar. Revenue of $4.8 million on $700 million of assets works out to roughly 69 basis points, a healthy yield for a practice built around wealthy families, and well above the $3 million production line that triggers a story here without an editor's call.

For J.P. Morgan, the timing is awkward. Days earlier, Phil Scott and Jim Atwood pulled practices producing more than $130 million a year out of the same brokerage unit to start Latigo Peak Partners. Sage is far smaller, but there is a difference worth noting: the Latigo Peak founders reached J.P. Morgan through its 2023 takeover of First Republic, while Sheets and Green were advisors the bank recruited directly from Bernstein in 2018.

Rockefeller keeps adding wirehouse and bank talent. In an Oct. 16 release the firm said it was responsible for $237 billion in client assets as of Aug. 31, across 35 U.S. markets and London, and its October fact sheet lists $236 billion as of Sept. 30 with about 200 advisor teams. WirehouseHUB has tracked the run, from an $800 million UBS team in New York in July to a $6.2 million Truist team in Charlotte in September.

The same day brought a smaller UBS hire in Ohio. Andrea M. Shea and Martin E. Shea, a mother-and-son pair working out of UBS offices in Upper Arlington and Pepper Pike, reportedly brought about $350 million in assets and about $2.5 million in revenue to Rockefeller. That production sits under WirehouseHUB's automatic threshold, so the Shea move is noted here rather than covered on its own. Rockefeller opened in Columbus in August with a Merrill Lynch group, Jones Wealth Partners.

WirehouseHUB found no public statement from J.P. Morgan or Rockefeller on the Houston team as of Oct. 23. The next markers to watch are BrokerCheck updates for Sheets and Green, how much of the book follows them, and whether J.P. Morgan takes legal action, as it did in June when it won a federal restraining order against a team that left for Morgan Stanley.