Former Incapital director Glenn Lotenberg debuts new role at AAM with ambitious plans

By Emma Trincal

New York, Jan. 6 – Advisors Asset Management has poached another top talent from Incapital, sources said, after the announcement Thursday of Glenn Lotenberg’s appointment as managing director of business development.

Lotenberg told Prospect News that he is excited about his new role in overseeing the distribution of structured products at the Monument, Colo.-based broker-dealer and registered investment advisor firm.

Lotenberg, who remains based in Boca Raton, Fla., follows in the steps of John Radtke, his former boss and chief executive at Incapital, who joined AAM last March to head up capital markets at the firm.

At Incapital, Lotenberg was managing director of the structured products trading/market-linked products wealth management business.

Structured products

“My focus will be to build up our business development group and to take structured products to the next level,” Lotenberg told Prospect News.

“My background is in structured products. It’s what I know best, and as a result I’ll be spending more time on these products.”

Lotenberg declined to comment about his departure from Incapital, which took place in the middle of last year. He said AAM offers a strong network of financial advisers who can benefit from enhanced trading and sales support.

Distribution channel

“AAM has an advantage, and that’s its internal broker-dealer network,” he said.

“The specific broker-dealers AAM has a trading relationship with are a bit different. We have contractual obligations with these firms to provide them with education and knowledge.

“Structured products have been around for a while but the idea is to take this business to the next level.

“You want to educate broker-dealers from a suitability, compliance and regulatory standpoint and help them articulate why structured products are a good asset allocation tool.

“The idea is to make it as easy as possible for the financial advisers to educate their clients. Hopefully when broker-dealers get more comfortable with compliance, the distribution of these products can become much easier over a longer life cycle.”

New tools

Lotenberg said he is optimistic about the market for 2017.

“People said last year’s volume wasn’t great. Meanwhile, every issuer I speak with says they had their best year,” he said.

A lot of the overall volume depends on the amount of notional from Bank of America, he noted.

The top agent last year captured more than 25% of the market, yet its sales dropped $3.5 billion, or more than 26%, from the previous year, according to data compiled by Prospect News.

“If their numbers are down, it brings down the totals for the rest of the Street,” he said.

However, the new year should be promising for the industry.

“Rates are rising. It will allow new products to be engineered. The expectations of innovation, new technology, new ways to educate financial advisers offer opportunities for us to use the skillsets we’ve built at our previous shops and bring it to AAM.”

Lotenberg said he is especially excited by opportunities offered by new technologies, citing the web-based distribution platforms of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan announced last year.

“We’re starting to see some nice things. The industry is moving in the right direction. The old bond business school is starting to change,” he said.

“We’ll use that to provide better resources available to financial advisers when dealing with their clients.”

Wanted

Lotenberg said his new group is in hiring mode.

“We’ll be hiring more people for structured products distribution.

“I just made two hires, one internally and another from another firm,” he added, declining to cite names.

“We’ll add a handful more over the next three to six months.”

According to a source, the “external” hire was David Parnes, who joined from Janney Montgomery Scott.

“As more business comes in, we’ll definitely bring on more talent,” Lotenberg said.

© 2015 Prospect News.
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