Virginia women find a home in The Winner’s Circle
Six make author’s list of the top financial advisers in the commonwealth

by Richard Foster
for Virginia Business
August 2006

For the second year in a row, Joseph Montgomery of Wachovia Securities in Williamsburg is Virginia’s top financial adviser on the Virginia Winner’s Circle, author R.J. Shook’s list of the state’s top 25 financial advisers for the ultra-wealthy.

But with all apologies to the amazing Montgomery as well as No. 2 financial adviser Douglas Stewart of Wachovia Securities in Fredericksburg, the big story this year begins with No. 3 adviser Dalal Maria Salomon with the Salomon & Ludwin Financial Consulting Group of Wachovia Securities in Richmond.

Female advisers are prominently featured in the Virginia list, a reflection of the fact that women control more than 50 percent of the nation’s wealth, Shook says. Last year, three women made the Virginia list — ranked Nos. 12, 13 and 16 out of 25. This year six women made the list, including Salomon, who was ranked No. 16 last year.

Shook actually compiles two financial adviser lists for Virginia Business. One is a list of 25 advisers to clients with high-net worth (more than $1 million) and ultra-high net worth (more than $10 million). The second list names five top retail advisers, who serve clients with a net worth of less than $1 million.

The first generation of female financial advisers, who started out in the 1970s and 1980s, are seeing their businesses come to maturity, and in many cases they’re now outpacing their male counterparts.

Female advisers held 44 percent of all jobs at Wall Street and regional brokerage firms in 2005, according to the Securities Industry Association. That’s up from 37 percent in 2003. Women also make up 19 percent of retail brokerage positions nationwide in 2006, up from 16 percent in 2004, according to the association.

Shook is a former financial adviser who writes the top-selling Winner’s Circle series of books about the financial advising industry. The Winner’s Circle is also the trademarked name of Shook’s independent advocacy group that promotes best practices in the investment industry and the value of financial advice. His annual lists of the nation’s best advisers appear in Barron’s, the Dow Jones business and financial weekly newspaper. For the first time this year, Shook created a separate list for Barron’s of the nation’s top 100 women financial advisers. Seven Virginia women made that list, including Salomon, who was ranked No. 17 in the nation.

In previous decades, Shook says, “Wall Street was having some diversity-related issues and then all of a sudden the Street woke up, and they realized women are ideally suited for this profession.” Women are not just holding financial-industry positions; they’re also controlling more and more of the wealth. And while the financial advising profession is still dominated by men, many female clients may find a more simpatico attitude to investing with female advisers.

Female advisers, says Susan Olitsky of Merrill Lynch in Norfolk, bring “attributes that may not fall in the purview of the male. I think we’re more inclined to be nurturers, more inclined to educate, more inclined to be better listeners. I can remember being criticized for spending too much time with clients in the beginning years, but that was because I needed to know and understand the family and the dynamics. I think it’s served both the client and me.”

Women advisers also “tend to be real detail-oriented and tend to do a great deal of research before they make any recommendation,” Shook says. A great example of this, he says, was seen during the high-tech bubble and the crash that followed it. Male advisers were more likely to suggest stocks of the day and take risks. They generally outperformed females during the tech boom, but when the stock market took a dive, the women tended to outperform their male counterparts over the long haul.

“ I’ve interviewed all the top 100 females in the nation,” Shook says, “and when you ask them to describe their business, every single one of them describes their clientele as their family, they describe their teams as their family, and that’s the kind of relationship they build with their clients.”

Salomon chalks her success up to getting to know everything she can about her clients, and doing it in person. Regular face-to-face meetings have become a best practice in the industry in recent years, but it’s how Salomon has always conducted her business.

“ I know who their pallbearers should be, I know what music they want to play at their funeral, I know everything about their children. I have had many clients tell me I know more about them than most of their children know. … For me, most of my clients have become like an extended family, which is why I never plan to retire. I can’t imagine leaving them.”

And more importantly, Salomon knows what her clients want to achieve with their money and their lives. “Success for us means living the life [the client] wants to live, whether you are on track to fulfill the goals you have set out for us and the lifestyle you want, not whether you’re in the next hot fund or whether you beat the S&P.”

Salomon says that she and her business partner, Dan Ludwin, “are not what I would call money-motivated people,” a statement that might raise eyebrows among other advisers. “We are motivated by a sense of doing something positive in people’s lives and playing an important role in people’s lives and making a difference.”

A financial adviser since 1984, when she joined Wheat First Securities (now Wachovia Securities), Salomon says, “I’m really big on visualization. When I’m putting a plan together for a client I literally try to imagine myself as that person and how I would feel about the investments and the mix. … I get a pretty good sense of their personality and what they’re afraid of and what their makeup is, and I really try to visualize … I try to imagine myself, that I’m 65, I’ve worked my whole life, I’m not going to be getting my paycheck anymore. How am I going to feel? Does this [financial plan] feel comfortable? … [As an adviser] you can take that analytical, dollars-and-cents route, but I guess I try to take it from a [point of view of] how is it going to feel to this person?”

All of the women on Shook’s Virginia list have been in the business for 20 to 30 years, usually staying with the same firms. And many weren’t exactly embraced when they first entered the male-dominated industry.

“ If you struggle for something, you can be more passionate about it afterward,” adviser Lee Corey of Morgan Stanley in Alexandria says. “I love what I do, and I’m passionate about it. … It’s been an absolutely great ride.”

But it hasn’t been without a few bumps. When Corey started out, clients would sometimes refuse to meet with female financial advisers and when she called men within the firm they would sometimes put her on hold and then never come back to the phone. Or, worse, she recalls, they’d ask things like, “Toots, who’s your boss?”

“ You had to laugh,” she says. “A little humor goes a long way.” She’d immediately call her detractors “Toots” right back or defuse the situation with a joke. But more importantly, Corey believed “the best resolution is to prove someone wrong in the right way,” by outperforming the competition.
Olitsky agrees. Women “were somewhat of a novelty” in the financial industry in the late ’70s and early ’80s, she says. “You really had to prove yourself, not only with your prospective clients but with your peers. I can’t say it was a piece of cake, but it was worth it.”