Ryan Marcus, managing director of engagement at MarketCounsel, has joined Binah Capital Group, the public company created last year with the merger of broker/dealer aggregator Wentworth Management Services and Kingswood’s SPAC, as chief business and engagement officer, a new role. He’ll report directly to Binah CEO Craig Gould, and will work alongside David Shane, CFO.
Marcus, who had been promoted to his role at MarketCounsel last year, had been at that company and The Hamburger Law Firm for close to 14 years. He started there in 2009, left in 2014 to join RBC, and then rejoined in early 2019.
The 45-year-old said it was time to expand upon what he had learned under MarketCounsel President and CEO Brian Hamburger’s leadership and take on a new challenge.
“I wanted to challenge myself and take on a role that was with a larger organization that was a little bit more ambidextrous as far as what the responsibilities were, that had a greater footprint within wealth management,” Marcus said.
Binah has some $27 billion in assets across its subsidiaries, including broker/dealers Cabot Lodge Securities, World Equity Group, and PKS Investments, one of MarketCounsel’s and Hamburger Law Firm’s largest clients.
In the new role, Marcus will develop and implement a business development strategy across the three b/ds. He’ll also foster strategic partnerships with platform RIAs, such as Sanctuary, that need a corporate RIA or friendly b/d.
“One of the benefits of being front and center at MarketCounsel is that I’ve luckily enough become one of the most connected people in all of wealth management, and I intend to utilize that to Binah’s benefit,” Marcus said.
Marcus said he will work on making PKS’s corporate RIA a more viable option for advisors who may want to forgo their own RIA.
“PKS is historically seen as an RIA-friendly broker/dealer. Well, they can be much more than that.”
He’ll also work to expand the services and capabilities of the broker/dealer so that it’s more of a services-oriented firm, as opposed to a more accommodating firm.
Marcus said his decision to leave MarketCounsel was emotional, yet supported.
Hamburger said the firm does not plan to hire anyone else in a sales role.
Last May, MarketCounsel hired Anthony Stich, former chief revenue officer at digital custodian Entrustody, as executive managing director.
“Shortly after Tony came on board, we aligned on a list of objectives and priorities,” Hamburger said. “Tony turned to sales and marketing, something that he knows really well. And he pretty quickly arrived at this very selfless conclusion that this organization doesn’t need sales and marketing.”
“He came back and said, ‘The demand that you guys have for your services and solutions that you can provide simply outpaces what we can deliver. We have to do a very unmarketing thing, which is strip out so much of the resources that we devoted to sales and marketing and reallocate them.’”
MarketCounsel has expanded its executive team in recent months. In December, the firm hired Paul Lally, a former partner at Wipfli, as head of business solutions. Also last year, the firm added Kristen Benadom, former head of legal at Nitrogen, as general counsel of The Hamburger Law Firm. Just this month, the firm hired Jim Pavia, a former senior editor at CNBC, as managing director of communications.