UBS Lands $1 Billion Merrill Lynch Advisor Team

The $1 billion Merrill Lynch addition signals that UBS's recruiting pipeline is producing results even as the firm works to stabilize after a difficult 2025.

UBS has scored a significant recruiting win, bringing on a veteran advisor duo from Merrill Lynch who collectively oversee approximately $1 billion in client assets. The hire — one of the largest wirehouse-to-wirehouse transitions of 2026 — comes at a critical moment for UBS as the firm tries to stabilize its U.S. wealth management division after a bruising 2025 that saw dozens of teams walk out the door.

Financial advisors Mark Lilley and Gabriel Trigo, along with senior registered client associate Ivelisse Moreno Guzman, have joined UBS from Merrill Lynch. The move is exactly the kind of headline UBS needs right now: a billion-dollar team choosing to join the firm rather than leave it. After a year in which UBS lost at least 54 teams managing nearly $52 billion in client assets, every major recruiting win carries outsized symbolic weight.

Lilley joins from Merrill Lynch, where he spent more than 15 years working with individuals, families, and institutions. He started his career at PaineWebber in 1996, giving him roughly three decades of industry experience. His practice is built around portfolio construction, risk management, and long-term planning for high-net-worth families. At Merrill, Lilley consistently ranked among the top producers in his complex, according to industry sources. His BrokerCheck record shows a clean regulatory history with no disclosed complaints or arbitrations.

Trigo also arrives from Merrill Lynch, bringing more than 10 years of experience. His practice has focused on asset allocation, cross-border advisory work, and global investment strategy, serving both domestic and international clients. The cross-border specialty is particularly valuable for UBS, which manages over $6 trillion in global client assets and positions itself as the premier platform for advisors with internationally oriented practices.

That cross-border focus aligns directly with UBS's core strategic differentiator. Unlike its domestic wirehouse competitors, UBS can offer clients seamless access to banking, lending, and investment management capabilities across more than 50 countries. For advisors like Trigo whose client base includes foreign nationals, expatriates, and U.S. families with international business interests, that global infrastructure is difficult to replicate at any other U.S. wirehouse.

The timing of the hire is significant. UBS has been working aggressively to rebuild its recruiting narrative after implementing compensation grid changes in 2025 that triggered an unprecedented wave of departures. The firm responded by hiring Morgan Stanley's national recruiting chief Ben Firestein and rolling out a softer 2026 compensation plan designed to retain remaining producers and attract new ones.

UBS CFO Todd Tuckner told analysts on the firm's fourth-quarter earnings call that the firm expects "net recruiting outflow impacts to materially taper" after the first half of 2026. The Lilley-Trigo hire is a concrete data point supporting that claim. When a billion-dollar team voluntarily moves to a firm that just experienced massive attrition, it suggests the recruiting pitch is gaining traction — or at minimum, that the economics of the deal were compelling enough to overcome reputational concerns.

The question for UBS is whether this hire represents the start of a genuine recruiting turnaround or an isolated win secured with a premium transition deal. Industry sources estimate that UBS has been offering transition packages in the range of 200% to 250% of trailing twelve-month production for teams of this caliber — well above the 150% to 175% range that was standard before the 2025 exodus. At that level, the economics of recruiting are challenging: a team generating $5 million in annual revenue at a 200% deal costs UBS $10 million upfront, with a breakeven timeline of three to four years.

For Merrill Lynch, the loss stings. The firm has been one of the most active recruiters in 2026, landing teams from UBS, Morgan Stanley, and regional competitors. Losing a billion-dollar team to UBS — a firm that Merrill has been actively recruiting from — represents a reversal that Merrill's leadership will not welcome. Merrill has historically retained advisors at rates above 95%, and departures of this magnitude invite scrutiny from senior management about whether the firm's value proposition is keeping pace with competitor offers.

The broader wirehouse recruiting market remains intensely competitive. For UBS, converting its recruiting pipeline into consistent wins like this one will determine whether the firm's U.S. wealth management turnaround is real or merely aspirational.