Skip Schweiss, a former president and managing director with Omaha, Neb.-based TD Ameritrade Trust Co., was named CEO effective Oct. 1.
The newly appointed executive said he will beef up areas that need to accommodate Sierra Investment’s growth. The firm’s assets under management have ballooned 167% to $9.1 billion from $3.4 billion in June 2018.
“The firm has really been overseen by its founders for nearly 35 years, and they’ve really seen a big acceleration in growth in the last five years. They felt it was time to get a CEO in place to oversee a lot of that growth and lead the firm through more growth and to the next level,” Schweiss said.
Schweiss comes from brokerage giant TD Ameritrade, which merged with Charles Schwab Corp. in a $22 billion merger that closed in October. Schweiss left TD Ameritrade a year ago, just a few months before the merger closed, and had been consulting with Sierra Investment in recent months.
His leadership at TD Ameritrade enabled the company to expand its retirement plan services to more than 12,000 plans and more than $40 billion in assets under administration.
In his newly created role at Sierra Investment, Schweiss will focus on the enterprise’s continued growth as well as demonstrating the value of Sierra’s investment strategies for individual investors, mutual funds and other areas.
Not having a CEO for a boutique investment firm isn’t rare, but it is somewhat unique.
“I’ve known a lot of these kinds of firms. What you usually see is there will be a founder who is doing a good job, building the firm over a period of years, and they get to a point where they realize they need to bring in outside leadership,” Schweiss said. “This path isn’t very unusual although perhaps this firm went on longer than some firms go before doing that.”
Sierra Investment Managing Directors David Wright and Kenneth Sleeper, who co-founded the firm in 1987, will remain focused on the investment management side of the business, working with clients and other duties.
