Milwaukee-based Robert W. Baird & Co. Inc. has hired industry veteran David Perez to open a wealth management office in Portland, Ore.
The hiring was the latest of several Baird has made recently from the wire houses, and it marked the company's entry into the Pacific Northwest.
Baird declined to make Perez available to comment, but Mike Schroeder, the president of Baird's private wealth management division, said the firm looks for the best talent it can find before specifically looking to expand into a region.
The Pacific Northwest has been interesting to the firm for some time, he said, along with the Rocky Mountain area and the Middle Atlantic states. Baird has 69 offices in 22 states, including the new one in Oregon.
Perez is to be a nonproducing manager; he will hire advisers to flesh out the company's expansion. No goal has been set for number of advisers, but Baird has targeted $10 million as a production threshold within a year and $20 million in two to three years, Schroeder said.
Perez had worked at Smith Barney and its legacy firms for his entire 29-year career. Most recently, he oversaw 47 advisers in two branches generating $25 million of revenue in all.
