Merrill Lands $1.2B Aliaskari Group From Morgan Stanley in McLean

Merrill pulled a named PWM team back from Morgan Stanley — Aliaskari left Merrill in 2012 and just returned with $1.2B and two partners, a concrete wire-to-wire win under Moynihan’s more-advisors mandate.

Merrill Private Wealth Management just pulled a $1.2 billion book out of Morgan Stanley.

The Aliaskari Group joined Merrill’s McLean, Va., office from Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management in early September, according to WealthManagement.com and InvestmentNews. Founding partner Mehrak Aliaskari leads the practice with Corinne Heiberger and Frank Vorndran. The team was producing about $5.8 million in revenue at Morgan Stanley.

This is a wire-to-wire raid. Same channel. Different logo on the door.

Who moved

Aliaskari is a CFP with more than 23 years in the business. BrokerCheck shows he left Merrill for Morgan Stanley in 2012. He is now back at Merrill Private Wealth Management — a full-circle recruiting win for Bank of America’s wealth arm.

Heiberger spent more than a decade at Morgan Stanley as a private wealth manager. Vorndran started his career there in 2010. The group sits in Merrill’s Northern Virginia market under market executive Peter Ambrose and resident director Mike Long, aligned with the Southeast private wealth division led by Josh Moody.

Merrill framed the practice as a high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth book. The numbers match that claim: $1.2 billion in client assets on roughly $5.8 million of production.

Same week, same channel

Merrill did not stop at McLean.

Dylan Price joined Merrill’s Charlotte office from Truist with about $300 million in client assets. InvestmentNews put his production near $1.9 million; WealthManagement.com reported about $1.7 million. He reports into the Charlotte & Associates market under Peter Ardolino.

Ronnie Murad joined Merrill in Charleston, W.Va., from Wells Fargo Advisors with about $285 million and roughly $1.5 million in production. He sits in the Louisville & Associates market under John Gardner after about eight years at Wells. Earlier stops include Alex. Brown, Lehman Brothers, and Citigroup Global Markets.

Taken together, Merrill’s announced haul that week was about $1.8 billion in client assets from Morgan Stanley, Truist, and Wells — all inside the employee-brokerage channel.

That week’s wirehouse tape stayed inside the channel. J.P. Morgan Wealth Management added Pourya Naeimi in Palo Alto from Wells Fargo with about $533 million. Wells Fargo Advisors posted its own inbound slate across California, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina — more than $590 million combined, including the Tully Cottillion Group from Merrill in South Carolina with $270 million-plus. Private Wealth Daily’s wrap on the week was blunt: bank to bank, not bank to RIA.

Why it matters for advisors

BofA CEO Brian Moynihan has already said Merrill needs more advisors to unlock growth. This is what that directive looks like on the ground — named PWM talent, Northern Virginia scale, and a producer who once left Merrill coming home with a nine-figure book.

It also sharpens the Merrill–Morgan Stanley fight WirehouseHUB has been tracking. Merrill has been hunting Morgan Stanley’s top producers while Morgan Stanley reframes losses as an AUM story. Aliaskari is not a press-line. It is a concrete PWM team with disclosed assets and production.

Wolfe Research data cited by WealthManagement.com put Bank of America at a net loss of 552 advisors through Aug. 13 — the industry’s largest net outflow in that cut. Recruiting wins of this size are how Merrill tries to plug that hole without waiting on organic headcount.

For advisors still on a Morgan Stanley or Wells grid, the takeaway is simple. The checks are writing. The destinations are still wirehouses. And a 14-year Morgan Stanley tenure did not lock Aliaskari in when Merrill came back with the right seat.

Aliaskari left Merrill in 2012. He just came back with $1.2 billion and two partners. That is the recruiting market wirehouse producers are living in right now — not a theory about independence, a named team changing buildings inside the same channel.