LPL continues to make gains in recruiting

LPL Investment Holdings Inc. continues to recruit heavily this year. Excluding the recent move of financial advisers from three broker-dealers in the LPL Network to LPL Financial, the firm added 915 advisers during the one-year period ended Sept. 30. That represents an increase of 8% over the previous 12-month period, the firm reported last week in its third-quarter earnings report. “We've continued to have a good year” in recruiting, said chief financial officer Robert Moore, though he added that the past few months have seen a slight falloff from the “torrid pace” of the first half of 2009. LPL posted a loss of $1 million for the third quarter, due largely to restructuring charges. A year earlier, the company reported net income of $17 million. The restructuring charges stem from moving 1,200 representatives in September from three broker-dealers onto the self-clearing -platform of LPL Financial, the biggest broker-dealer in the LPL Network. LPL said that the restructuring charge for the move was $25 million after taxes. Without the charge, LPL's earnings would have been 40% above those for the third quarter of 2008, the firm said. For the first nine months of this year, LPL's net income was $29 million, down from $43 million a year earlier. Revenue for the first nine months this year was $2 billion, down 17% from a year earlier. E-mail Bruce Kelly at bkelly@investmentnews.com.