New Wealth Management Firm Targets Top Crust

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Longtime wealth manager Jonathan Foster last week announced the launch of a firm catering to the investment needs of the area’s richest residents.

Angeles Wealth Management LLC in Santa Monica aims to provide investment advice to high-net-worth and ultrahigh-net-worth individuals.

The new firm is backed by Angeles Investment Advisors LLC, an 11-year-old company managing $40 billion primarily for institutional clients.

Foster, the former president of Carson Wealth Management Group and head of E-Trade Wealth Management, said he believes that individual investors do not typically get the same level of advice as institutional clients. The new firm aims to make that advice to private clients.

“If a wealthy family or individual becomes a client of Angeles Wealth, they inherit that exceptional process that up until now has been an institutional-only process,” said Foster, 54, chief executive of the new firm. “Angeles Investment Advisors focuses on institutional clients and Angeles Wealth Management focuses on private clients, but it’s the same investment process, same investment team.”

The firm will share offices and support staff with Angeles Investment Advisors, which is the majority shareholder of the new firm.

Foster said he began discussions about launching a firm last summer after serving on several investment boards for charitable organizations that were advised by Angeles Investment Advisors.

Merger Delay

It appears the long-awaited blockbuster merger in the credit union industry won’t be happening anytime soon.

Kinecta Federal Credit Union in Manhattan Beach and NuVision Federal Credit Union in nearby Huntington Beach have put the brakes on a pending deal that would be the second largest credit union merger ever and create one of the industry’s biggest institutions.

First announced in 2010, the deal will be shelved until at least late next year due to continuing sluggishness in the market and larger-than-expected challenges for Kinecta, which is the county’s second largest credit union with $3.1 billion in assets and 237,000 members.

Kinecta recently reported a $30.6 million loss for last year. The institution had lost $125 million during 2008 and 2009, but had appeared to turn the corner with a profitable 2010.

A Kinecta spokeswoman said the complexity of a large merger drove both institutions to focus on their operations and strategic initiatives before finalizing the deal.

The delay was first reported in the Credit Union Times trade publication.

Bull Run

The stock markets have been volatile, but that hasn’t hurt Wedbush Securities.

The downtown L.A.-based investment firm, a subsidiary of Wedbush Inc., was named the top stock picker in a number of categories in the biannual Barron’s-Zack’s rankings.

Wedbush was No. 1 by six-month, one-year and three-year returns, beating large Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs. With a 5.4 percent return over the past six months, it was the only firm in positive territory during that period.

In a statement, Wedbush attributed the strong performance to its Best Ideas List, which focuses on 10 to 20 stocks the firm expects to return 20 percent in the next year.

Orders Lifted

Regulators have lifted a pair of cease-and-desist orders against Open Bank, a small lender headquartered in downtown Los Angeles.

Hurt by losses in its commercial real estate portfolio, the bank, which serves the local Korean-American community, received enforcement actions in 2008 and 2009 directing management to bolster the bank’s dwindling capital and take other steps to strengthen operations.

Since then, the institution has hired a number of new executives, including Chief Executive Min Kim, who previously held the same post at Nara Bank. Open Bank also raised more than $11 million last year.

“We are very pleased that the orders have been terminated and that our efforts to comply with the orders have been recognized,” Kim said in a statement.

The bank, which has $136 million in assets, was founded in 2005 as First Standard Bank.

C-Suite News

Pacific Alliance Bank in Rosemead announced that Chief Executive Robert Oehler has retired and was replaced by Joseph Chou. Oehler will remain vice chairman of the bank. … Richard Romero, chief operations officer of Los Angeles Firemen’s Credit Union, has accepted the chief executive job at Seattle Metropolitan Credit Union.

Staff reporter Richard Clough can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 251.

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