Matthew Burril This is Me

 Web References

1. 1. On Wall Street

   www.onwallstreet.com/detail.cf - [Cached]

   Last Visited: 4/2/2004

   Matthew Burril wanted out. Although his office was in the same Asheville, N.C., branch for almost six years, he had worked under four different owners and management regimes --first, Interstate/Johnson Lane; then First Union, which acquired the regional firm; then Wachovia, which took over First Union; and then the amalgam of Wachovia and Prudential Securities.
   
   By the time of the last merger, Burril had had enough.
   ...
   But making the decision and making the change are two very different issues, and Burril is nothing if not methodical. It took him nearly two years to complete the transition, and along the way he learned more about himself and about this business than he ever imagined.
   
   His first priority was to find a replacement for himself. By April 2002, when he decided to make the jump, he was the office's producing branch manager, supervising 15 brokers and the entire support staff. He didn't think it was fair or professional to walk out, leaving his staff and his company in a lurch. He asked management to find a new branch manager so that he could go back to working as a producer.
   
   It took Wachovia 18 months to find someone to take his place, but Burril was patient.
   
   "I'm a very long-term planning person," he says. "I think about things for years before I act on them, and I had made a commitment. I was never going to leave a company that I was managing. I didn't think that was right."
   
   Although he was patient, he wasn't idle. Burril and Karen Cogburn, the branch operations manager and now his business partner, used those 18 months to prepare for their departure.
   ...
   Burril decided that his first priority was a firm with large trading desk that offered strong operational support.
   
   "I am a completely transactional broker," he says. "I have zero managed money accounts, 11 annuity contracts, and less than two percent of my total assets in mutual funds."
   
   He also wanted a broker-dealer that had the financial strength to weather a downturn and that offered state-of-the-art technology.
   
   Ironically, Burril's first choice was Wachovia Services Financial Network (FiNet), the independent division of the same firm that employed him. He approached his branch manager in April 2002 about the possibility of moving his business over to the independent side of the firm. Then he talked to the regional manager. Finally, he talked to the head of Wachovia itself. He even had FiNet go to bat for him.
   
   "I begged them," Burril says.
   ...
   Knowing they would have to leave Wachovia, Burril and Cogburn started doing research on other independent firms in February 2003.
   ...
   "Operationally, they are very, very attuned to the traditional brokerage business," Burril says. "They have excellent transactional capabilities, a great trading desk and their own membership on the New York Stock Exchange. I can do any type of transaction with them that I would do with a wirehouse."
   
   While most of his business is in "Blue Plate Special stocks and bonds," his high-end clients need a little more sophistication with their books, including using such hedging strategies as options and collars to protect their equity exposure. But the bulk of his business is in fixed-income, so Burril needs access to the entire bond market.
   
   After deciding on a broker-dealer, the team's next hurdle was finding the right office space.
   ...
   "We are on the last remaining brick street in downtown Asheville," Burril says, making the firm's name immediately recognizable.
   ...
   Because the Asheville business community is small, keeping their extensive legwork secret for nearly two years was no easy feat, especially since Burril and Cogburn were both very high-profile members of their office team.
   ...
   And as far as productivity was concerned, Burril says he gave it his all.
   
   "I had my best production ever in my last year there," he says.
   ...
   "We did some well-planned pruning ahead of time," Burril says.
   
   He left his official client list at Wachovia, of course. But he always had his top accounts in his Palm Pilot, and new client files were already set up on the computer.
   ...
   By the end of the second day, Burril had made personal contact with the decisionmaker on every one of those accounts.
   ...
   "We were constantly picking up the phone and asking someone at Raymond James where to find something while trying to handle transactions," Burril says.
   
   It didn't help that they were making their big move in the last months of the year, traditionally the busiest time. He had planned to be up and running at the new office by October 1, but a glitch in leasing the office space set them back.
   
   "We had end-of-the-year tax statements that had to go out, lots of gifting, and all of the tax-loss selling where we had to find the cost basis of everything," he says. "We even had two customers die during the transition process, and one customer who bought a plane. We had to wire funds from New York to Kansas City after 4 p.m. one day."
   
   Thanks to the in-depth advanced planning they did before making the move, bolstered by the round-the-clock support they received from Raymond James, Burril and Cogburn never dropped a ball.
   ...
   In fact, the two major accounts that Burril lost didn't stay with Wachovia, either.
   
   "They weren't prepared for us to walk out the door, so we had a good leg up on them," Burril says.
   
   In all, Burril figures he lost about six weeks' worth of production during the transition. When the dust finally settled and the numbers started coming in, though, Burril and Cogburn discovered that they were actually ahead of projections.
   ...
   Burril estimates his out-of-pocket expenses, including everything from computers to insurance, totaled about $60,000. He even spent $2,000 out of his own pocket to pay for all his clients' transfer fees. He also repaid a Wachovia retention bonus of between $70,000 and $100,000, although his contract won't let him specify the amount.
   
   He says it was worth every penny.
   
   "This is my time," he says.