Independent Investment Advisors Demonstrate Demand for Schwab Advisor Transition Support Services

Independent Investment Advisors Demonstrate Demand for Schwab
Advisor Transition Support Services
More Than $10 Billion Dollars in Assets Under Management Potentially for Sale
by Advisors Using the Service 


SAN FRANCISCO, April 1  /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Since its debut 18 months
ago, Schwab Institutional's Advisor Transition Support has exceeded $10 billion
in total assets under management of independent investment advisors who have
indicated an interest in selling their businesses. Schwab Advisor Transition
Support offers a suite of services to help independent advisors plan their
mergers, acquisitions and internal succession, including a subscription-based
listing service for buyers and sellers of investment advisor firms and a job
opportunities posting service known as Career Opportunities.

Currently, the Schwab Advisor Transition Support listing service contains
listings for 85 advisor firms with more than $6 billion in assets for sale, and
more than 250 buyer firms. In addition, several large firms seeking to sell an
additional $3 billion in assets under management are using the service.

Career Opportunities includes job candidate postings that represent another $3
billion in potential business. Nearly 30 percent of the candidates on the
service state that they maintain a book of business ranging from $10 million to
more than $500 million in assets under management.

"The success of Advisor Transition Support has exceeded our expectations," said
David DeVoe, director of Advisor Transition Support at Schwab Institutional.
"Although the true measure of the program's success is the value we create for
each individual advisor using the service, we are delighted that the
infrastructure we've created has been embraced by hundreds of advisors of
varying sizes and stages of transition."

Earlier this month, Schwab Institutional concluded its sold-out workshop series
on transition planning that began in January. Schwab Institutional hosted these
workshops, where third-party experts including consultant/investment bank Moss
Adams LLP, the law firm of Stark & Stark, and Quist Valuation guided 142
participants through six two-day sessions designed to help them with mergers
and acquisitions and internal succession. Participants were not only exposed to
the fundamentals of mergers and acquisitions -- including planning, valuation,
organization structure, legal and taxes -- but also learned advanced deal
structure strategies to optimize these inter-related components.

"It was one of the best meetings I've ever attended," said George Mateyo of
Carnegie Capital Management, who attended a workshop in New York to learn more
about options for selling his Cleveland-based firm. "The peer-to-peer
interaction was exceptional, and the opportunity to speak with the experts
about my specific situation was immensely valuable."

Mark Soehn, one of three owners of Financial Solutions Advisory Group in
Chicago, had a very real opportunity to discuss with the experts:  he was in
negotiations with a seller he had identified through Schwab's listing service.
"The third-party experts helped me learn more about deal structure, legal
agreements and due-diligence -- all of which helped me accelerate the
acquisition and structure a deal that was better for both parties," he said.

Schwab Advisor Transition Support was launched in November 2003 in order to
offer advisor firms a wide array of resources to help institutionalize their
practices. The Advisor Transition Support listing service
(http://www.schwabtransition.com/) was launched in January 2004 to provide
independent advisor firms with the ability to confidentially search and
anonymously contact candidates on the listing service interested in buying,
selling or merging their businesses. The Career Opportunities job listing
service began in October 2004 and allows job seekers such as trust officers,
bank and wirehouse brokers -- as well as marketing, operations and investment
management candidates -- to post candidate profiles for review by hiring firms
and to search for current open positions with independent advisory firms. In
addition to the above, Schwab Advisor Transition Support also provides
information on preferred pricing referrals to industry experts, institutions
offering qualified advisors financing options for internal successions, mergers
and acquisitions, and a library of articles and white papers on transition
planning.

About Schwab Institutional

Schwab Institutional, a division of Charles Schwab & Co. Inc., is a leading
provider of custodial, operational and trading support for independent
fee-based investment advisors. Client assets custodied with Schwab
Institutional increased 21 percent to $348 billion between Dec. 31, 2003 and
Dec. 31, 2004. These assets, managed by the approximately 5,000 independent
advisor firms Schwab Institutional serves, represent approximately one-third of
total customer assets custodied with The Charles Schwab Corporation as of Dec.
31, 2004.

About Charles Schwab

The Charles Schwab Corporation (NYSE / Nasdaq: SCH), through its operating
subsidiaries, provides securities brokerage and financial services to
individual investors and the independent investment advisors who work with
them. With over 7 million individual investor accounts and more than $1
trillion in client assets, The Charles Schwab Corporation is one of the
nation's largest financial services firms. Its subsidiary Charles Schwab & Co.,
Inc. provides a complete range of investment services and products, including
an extensive selection of mutual funds; financial planning and investment
advice; retirement plans; referrals to independent fee-based investment
advisors; and custodial, operational and trading support for independent
fee-based investment advisors through its Schwab Institutional division. Its
subsidiary Charles Schwab Bank (member FDIC) provides banking and mortgage
services and products. The corporation's other operating subsidiaries include
U.S. Trust Corporation (member FDIC) and CyberTrader(R), Inc. (member SIPC).
These companies' Web sites can be reached at http://www.schwab.com/,
http://www.schwabbank.com/, http://www.ustrust.com/, and
http://www.cybertrader.com/.

The information provided here and on the web site
http://www.schwabadvisortransition.com/ ("Site") is for general informational
purposes only and is not intended to provide specific financial, accounting,
tax, legal or regulatory advice. Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. ("Schwab") makes no
representations as to the appropriateness of the information available on this
Site for any given situation or the accuracy of information contained in the
Schwab Advisor Transition Support Listing Service. Schwab does not warrant the
value or condition of the businesses posted as potential buyers and sellers on
this Site. Schwab takes no responsibility for investigating, supplementing,
updating or correcting such information. Through the Schwab Advisor Transition
Support service, Schwab may provide referrals to third party professionals and
financial institutions that may be of assistance to advisors in transition
planning process, including the succession planning and sale or acquisition
process. Advisors must decide whether to hire or use the third parties and the
appropriateness of their services for the advisor. Schwab does not supervise
the third parties and takes no responsibility to monitor the service they may
provide to advisors. With regard to referrals to lender, lenders have not
committed to make credit available. Each loan proposal will be evaluated by the
lender on its own merits according to the lender's underwriting standards.
Please see the Terms of Use (https://www.schwabtransition.com/termsofuse.asp )
for important terms and conditions governing use of this Site.

Member SIPC (0305-00354) 

DATASOURCE: Charles Schwab



CONTACT:  Alison Wertheim of Charles Schwab & Co. Inc., [phone],

or 



Web site:  http://www.schwab.com/

Web site:  http://www.schwabadvisortransition.com/

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