Edward Jones to hire 1,000 financial advisers in 2010
St. Louis Business Journal
by Kelsey Volkmann
March 24, 2010
Edward Jones plans to hire 1,000 new financial advisers across the United States and Canada by the end of 2010, spokesman John Boul said.
In Chicago, the brokerage firm plans to add 50 new hires this year and keep increasing its headcount in the Windy City over the next few years to eventually double its number of financial advisers there, he said.
St. Louis-based Edward Jones currently has about 375 advisers in the Chicago area.
"Chicago is just one of the many markets where we expect to grow," Boul said.
St. Louis investment firms say they are reaping the benefits from a national trend of financial advisers exiting bigger brokerages and bringing their clients with them.
Edward Jones, with $516 billion in assets under management, doesn't recruit much from other firms, preferring organic growth. Even so, it increased outside hiring last year, bringing in about 100 brokers from other firms, triple its normal annual total, said Dan Timm, the firm's hiring partner. "A lot of very qualified people are out looking for jobs," he told the Business Journal earlier this year. In addition, Jones had a net gain of $2.4 billion in assets that had been under management at other firms, he said. Jones has more than 12,000 brokers in all.
Edward Jones, led by managing partner Jim Weddle, is the third-largest privately held company in St. Louis with $3.5 billion in revenue in 2009.
