Shaw and Partners has been reeling in financial advisers from WA’s tightly-knitted talent pool at pace, and the hiring spree doesn’t look to be stopping there.

“If good quality advisers are out there, we’re very keen to talk to them,” Shaw and Partners WA state manager Davide Bosio told The West Australian.

The national broking firm’s local division has just wrapped up a spate of recruitment, which has seen at least 20 new additions to its St Georges Terrace office since November who are expected to help bring in $2b of new assets to the business.

Among the new additions is Stuart Beattie, a veteran financial adviser around town who shifted his entire team over to Shaw and Partners from a rival wealth management team at Morgan Stanley late last year. It’s been a particular talking point among the sector in WA, where any moves between firms are watched closely.

The departures from Morgan Stanley’s Wealth Management Australia division followed a shift in the bank’s broader strategy to work with high-net-worth and ultra-high-net worth clients - those with assets between the $1m and $30m mark.

For the Shaw and Partners team in WA, it created a rare — albeit competitive — recruiting opportunity.

“We can all buy and sell shares these days ... so when an adviser is looking to potentially move firm, it comes down to culture,” Mr Bosio said.

He believes the size and scale of Shaw and Partners — owned by Swiss bank EFG International — had also given advisers confidence in making the move.

The past few weeks saw Shaw and Partners snap up another two from Morgan Stanley, as well as another three from Ord Minnett.

“We think we’ve done a terrific job of building a business that really gives the adviser a lot of flexibility, gives them all the tools they need (and) the best of breed in research,” Mr Bosio said.

Shaw and Partners’ WA office now hosts close to 50 staff and the firm is set to move to bigger floor within its 108 Terrace address to accommodate the new additions and any more that come through the door.

“We don’t have a written goal saying ‘we are going to be the biggest and the best’. But it’s certainly an aspiration for us to continue growing,” Mr Bosio said.

“Can I see ourselves as the number one firm in WA? Absolutely.”

Having a big bank in its corner also means Shaw and Partners has got scope, if desired, to pick up smaller, or boutique, advisory firms swamped with increased compliance requirements imposed on the sector in recent years following the financial services Royal Commission.

“We’ve spoken to many, and we continue to speak to many. There are many smaller groups who provide excellent services, excellent advice . . . but they also turn the lights on and off every day.

“By virtue of their success, they’re very, very busy.

“So that ability to scale up and say, ‘can we talk to a larger group who can help us take this business to the next level?’ Those are the people that we’ve been talking to. They’re the people that were keen to continue talking to.

“I think those sorts of acquisitions make a huge amount of sense.”

Mr Bosio is somewhat familiar with the process himself.

He was running then-longstanding WA broking firm DJ Carmichael back in 2019 when it was scooped up by Shaw and Partners amid a bout of consolidation at the time that also saw Patersons Securities bought by Canaccord Genuity and Hartleys merge with nearby neighbour Euroz.