Cetera has recruited another former Commonwealth Financial Network advisor and his team from LPL Financial, which acquired Commonwealth in 2025. Advisor Edward Duffy's team oversees $608 million in assets under administration, Cetera said in a recruiting announcement yesterday.

Duffy and his team, called Lexington Financial, are based in Braintree, Mass. He is an advisor with more than four decades' experience and had been registered with Commonwealth since 1993, according to BrokerCheck, a public database maintained by industry self-regulatory organization Finra.

The Lexington Financial team includes advisors John F. Walsh and William A. Creesy; Duffy's son, Michael G. Duffy, investment coordinator; Duffy's daughter Megan Duffy, client service coordinator; Elizabeth McMahon, director of operations; and Walsh's son, John F. Walsh Jr., client service associate.

Duffy says that the LPL acquisition of Commonwealth spurred him to reevaluate whether he wanted to remain with the company. He and his team spent six months considering other companies to move to, ultimately selecting Cetera because they could retain their custody relationship with Fidelity's National Financial Services. LPL Financial custodies and clears client assets itself; Cetera uses several custodians, including Fidelity.

"Leaving Commonwealth wasn't something we took lightly after 32 years -- we wouldn't have made a change if Commonwealth hadn't been acquired, but that effectively made the decision for us," Duffy said in a statement. "Our goal was finding a broker-dealer that allowed us to retain control of our processes while protecting the experience our clients were used to."

In leaving LPL Financial, he follows in the footsteps of numerous other former Commonwealth advisors who have departed since the giant wealth management company acquired its smaller rival. Commonwealth had 2,900 financial advisors and $285 billion of brokerage and advisory assets at the time the deal was announced in March 2025. From the time of the acquisition announcement until the end of 2025, 653 Commonwealth advisors, or 22.5%, left the company, according to a research report posted in January by AdvizorPro and Muriel Consulting.

LPL Financial operates one of the industry's largest independent broker-dealers, and has grown steadily through acquisitions and recruiting individual advisor teams. Advisors affiliated with an independent broker-dealer own their practice and rely on the broker-dealer to provide a trading platform. LPL Financial has more than 32,000 financial advisors and $2.3 trillion in brokerage and advisory assets.

Like LPL Financial, Cetera has been growing through acquisitions and recruiting efforts. The company has approximately 12,000 financial professionals. It had approximately $630 billion in assets under administration as of March 31.

Write to Andrew Welsch at andrew.welsch@barrons.com

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July 08, 2026 13:56 ET (17:56 GMT)

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