Wells Fargo Advisors has added two financial advisors who had managed $1.2 billion in client assets to its Dallas-based private client group.
Paul Cooke and Jake Trousdale have left Citigroup to join Wells Fargo, the San Francisco-based wirehouse with about 12,000 financial advisors across its various divisions, including the FiNet independent channel, according to its most recent count. Cooke and Trousdale had been with Citigroup for over 12 years, where they were both directors, according to BrokerCheck and their LinkedIn accounts. The duo will be joined by Debbie Cornwell, a director and business group manager in Citigroup’s private wealth division.
“We’re excited to have them on board and to support their continued success,” Chris Gerrish, mid-America market leader for Wells Fargo, said in a statement.
In 2025, Wells Fargo saw a net gain in advisors after struggling with attrition in prior years, according to analysis by Wolfe Research and data from ISS Market Intelligence.
In October, the wirehouse announced it had poached a $1 billion advisor team from Bank of America. In December, it landed its largest recruiting win by snagging a 16-advisor team managing $6.3 billion in assets from UBS.
At the same time, Wells Fargo has seen advisors leave to start their own RIAs, as well as several teams jump to upstart hybrid RIA aggregator &Partners, which is led by David Kowach, the former president and CEO of Wells Fargo Advisors.
Wells Fargo did not respond to a request for its most up-to-date count of advisors, a figure it and other publicly-listed wealth managers used to provide quarterly. Firm CEO and Chairman Charles Scharf said on Wells Fargo’s most recent earnings call that the company has been stemming attrition in large part due to improvements to its independent platform.
