&Partners has added Foothills Legacy Wealth Management, an eight-person advisory practice overseeing $864 million at Wells Fargo Advisors before its departure, extending the fast-growing wealth platform’s recruiting campaign among experienced wirehouse teams.

The practice is based in Saratoga Springs, New York, within the broader Albany capital region, and serves clients across Upstate New York. Its arrival gives &Partners a larger presence in a market where established advisory relationships, multigenerational families and closely held businesses can make local brand recognition and advisor continuity especially important.

Foothills Legacy is led by co-founders Andrew Cook and Gerard Mehan. Cook serves as managing director, while Mehan serves as a director. Both advisors moved to Wells Fargo from Merrill Lynch in 2019, according to industry registration information cited by AdvisorHub. Cook began his brokerage career at Merrill in 2012, while Mehan has worked in financial services since the early 1990s.

The remaining members are Christopher Cassidy, partner and director; Joanne Windas, partner and director; Brandie Mulligan, director of planning; Courtney Fagan, financial consultant; Susan Mallery, senior client relationship manager; and Gregory St. Denis, senior client relationship manager. The composition indicates that the transition involves an established service organization rather than only a small group of revenue-producing advisors.

That distinction matters for affluent clients. Large advisory relationships increasingly depend on coordinated investment management, retirement projections, tax-aware planning, estate-plan implementation and administrative support. Moving planners and relationship managers alongside lead advisors can reduce disruption during the transfer of accounts and preserve institutional knowledge about individual households.

Foothills Legacy describes its work as combining investment management with retirement, tax and estate planning for clients at different stages of their financial lives. The breadth of those services places the practice within a segment of the wealth industry in which advisors compete not only on portfolio performance but also on planning integration and the ability to coordinate with attorneys, accountants and other outside professionals.

The transaction represents the 13th advisor practice to join &Partners during 2026, according to WealthManagement.com. As of June 30, the firm had 117 practices associated with approximately $58 billion in assets. Those figures reflect assets connected with recruited teams and should not be interpreted as a guarantee that every client account or dollar follows an advisor during a transition.

The $864 million figure attributed to Foothills Legacy is similarly described as pre-hire assets under management. Clients retain the right to decide where their assets are held and whether to continue working with an advisor after a move. Actual transferred balances can differ because of client decisions, market movements, account restrictions and the timing of the transition process.

For &Partners, however, the size of the practice provides another indication that its operating model is attracting teams with established books of business. The firm was launched in 2023 by David Kowach, the former president and chief executive of Wells Fargo Advisors, along with Kristi Mitchem and John Alexander. Its leadership’s experience inside major wealth-management organizations has helped shape a recruiting pitch aimed at advisors who want greater autonomy without giving up centralized infrastructure.

The firm operates a hybrid structure combining brokerage and advisory services. Its advisors are treated as employees, but its economics are designed to resemble parts of the independent-contractor model. Advisors can receive a greater share of the revenue generated by their practices while assuming responsibility for certain office expenses, according to AdvisorHub.

&Partners also emphasizes advisor ownership. Its public positioning describes a firm built by advisors for advisors, with equity participation intended to align the people producing revenue with the value of the broader enterprise. InvestmentNews has reported that the company capped its equity pool at 40 million shares and expects to shift toward cash-based recruiting after reaching approximately $120 billion in assets.

The equity component can be especially important for teams evaluating the long-term economics of leaving a wirehouse. Traditional recruiting packages often focus on forgivable loans tied to trailing revenue and retention periods. An ownership-based structure adds a different consideration: whether advisors can benefit from the growth and potential future value of the platform itself.

That proposition also carries risk. Private-company equity may be difficult to value, can be illiquid and depends on the firm’s ability to execute its strategy. Advisors comparing offers must weigh any ownership interest against cash compensation, transition assistance, technology costs, office expenses, compliance responsibilities and restrictions attached to the award.

&Partners has set an ambitious growth objective. Executives have previously outlined a goal of reaching roughly 150 practices and $120 billion in assets by 2028. With 117 practices and approximately $58 billion reported at the end of June, the firm has already surpassed its original target of recruiting 100 top-performing teams but remains less than halfway to the stated asset goal.

The gap between practice count and the asset target suggests that continued recruitment of larger teams will be important. Adding many smaller practices could increase operating complexity without producing the asset scale envisioned in the five-year plan. Foothills Legacy, with $864 million in pre-hire assets, is therefore strategically more significant than its contribution to the raw practice count alone would indicate.

The firm’s recent additions have frequently come from Wells Fargo. In June, &Partners recruited Wavewood Private Wealth in New Jersey, Brookside Wealth Advisors and California-based Three Points Wealth Planners. Those three teams had approximately $1.6 billion in combined pre-hire assets and all came from Wells Fargo Advisors, according to WealthManagement.com.

AdvisorHub separately reported that &Partners hired several Wells Fargo employee-channel teams managing about $2.5 billion combined during May, as well as a $550 million practice from Wells Fargo’s independent Financial Network in Indiana the following month. The pattern has made Wells Fargo one of the most important sources of recruits for the newer platform.

The connection is partly explained by professional networks. Kowach’s previous leadership position at Wells Fargo Advisors gives &Partners familiarity with the wirehouse’s operating structure, advisor population and regional management system. Former executives can also provide recruits with a clearer explanation of how a new platform compares with the one they are leaving.

That does not necessarily indicate a broad deterioration in Wells Fargo’s wealth franchise. Major brokerages regularly lose and recruit teams, and the significance of any departure depends on the assets, revenue, client retention and local market involved. Wells Fargo remains one of the largest wealth-management providers in the United States and continues to operate both employee and independent advisor channels.

Wells Fargo declined to comment on the Foothills Legacy departure, AdvisorHub reported, while members of the team did not respond to that publication’s requests for comment. As a result, the parties have not publicly detailed the financial terms of the recruitment, expected transition costs or the proportion of client assets anticipated to move.

The absence of disclosed terms is typical in advisor recruiting. Compensation arrangements can include upfront payments, deferred incentives, performance-based awards, transition support and equity. The value ultimately received may depend on how much revenue and client assets transfer, how long advisors remain with the new firm and whether growth targets are achieved.

For Foothills Legacy’s clients, the practical implications will depend on account type and service arrangements. Households may need to review new account documentation, advisory agreements, fee schedules, privacy disclosures and potential changes in available investment products. Certain lending, banking, insurance or employer-plan relationships may remain with the former institution even when investment accounts move.

Clients should also distinguish between their relationship with individual advisors and services supplied by the platform. Portfolio construction, research, trading, account custody, reporting and compliance can be supported by different entities. A change in affiliation may therefore alter technology, statements, online access or product availability even when the advisory team and its planning process remain intact.

Advisors typically seek to minimize that disruption by transferring an entire support group. Foothills Legacy’s decision to move professionals responsible for planning and client relationships may help the practice maintain service capacity while lead advisors focus on explaining the transition, obtaining client consent and completing account paperwork.

Maintaining planning continuity will be particularly important for clients with concentrated equity positions, complex tax situations, trust structures or near-term liquidity needs. Poorly timed transfers can create operational complications, including delays in trading authority, required distributions, cash movements or scheduled payments. Experienced service personnel can help identify those risks before accounts are moved.

The recruitment also reflects a wider shift in advisor preferences. Experienced teams increasingly have options between remaining at a wirehouse, joining a regional broker-dealer, affiliating with an independent broker-dealer, launching an independent RIA or selecting a hybrid platform. The choice often depends on how much control advisors want over branding, staffing, investment selection and business succession.

Hybrid firms seek to occupy the middle ground. They offer more flexibility and potentially higher economics than conventional employee channels while retaining compliance, technology, research and practice-management resources that can be difficult for a newly independent firm to assemble. For teams approaching $1 billion in assets, that combination can reduce the operational burden of independence without fully recreating the constraints of a wirehouse.

Succession planning is another consideration. Large practices increasingly want structures that allow younger advisors to acquire ownership, senior partners to monetize part of their business and clients to remain with a stable team after a founder retires. Equity in the parent platform, combined with ownership or economic rights at the practice level, can create additional succession paths.

For &Partners, the challenge will be maintaining service quality as the number of practices grows. Rapid recruitment requires investment in supervision, technology, transition personnel, investment research and operational support. The platform must also integrate teams with different business models without undermining the autonomy that helped attract them.

Regulatory oversight will remain central. A hybrid organization must manage brokerage and advisory obligations, conflicts associated with compensation and products, cybersecurity controls, recordkeeping and supervision across a geographically dispersed network. Growth can improve scale, but it also increases the consequences of weaknesses in compliance systems or inconsistent practices.

The Foothills Legacy transaction therefore represents more than another advisor departure from a large bank. It is a test of whether an advisor-owned, hybrid platform can convert recruiting momentum into durable client relationships and a scalable national wealth business. &Partners has demonstrated that it can persuade sizable teams to join; its longer-term performance will depend on retaining those teams, transferring client assets successfully and delivering the infrastructure promised during recruitment.

For the wealth-management sector, the move reinforces the continuing redistribution of advisor talent among wirehouses, independent firms and hybrid platforms. As experienced teams gain more choices, competition is likely to remain centered on ownership, planning capabilities, technology and succession support rather than compensation alone. Foothills Legacy’s $864 million transition is a notable example of that change and another step in &Partners’ effort to become a larger national competitor.