Robinson Financial Group, Boston MA

As a corporate executive, you face unique investment challenges, such as navigating complex federal securities laws, complying with internal company trading policies, and managing your personal tax liabilities.

Our team coordinates the efforts of your existing professional advisors (such as your tax advisor or legal counsel) as well as our network of Wells Fargo Advisors resources (including access to a deep bench of subject matter experts and specialists) to help develop, implement, and execute strategies and transactions to better manage your unique challenges.

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With an extensive background in psychology and finance, Leo Robinson has spent over two decades guiding executives through their transition into a new role. Leo and the team at The Robinson Financial Group work with you to plan and manage transitions on both a personal and a financial basis. We meet with you to help plan for your change in responsibilities, timing, and future life goals.

Using an executive risk analysis, we pinpoint risks to your long-term goals. Our risk analysis looks at not only your investment portfolio, but your entire family’s wealth, security, and wellbeing – even beyond estate planning and insurance needs.

Our executive risk analysis underlines potential risks in your current income, portfolio, and company stock plan. It also models the impact on your estate plan, the impact from a family perspective, and potential tax pitfalls. We work with you to develop a plan around mitigating these risks. Additionally, the process looks comprehensively at your entire balance sheet to understand the impact of short- and long-term debt, highlighting where it can be effective, necessary, or costly.

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Corporate executives have complex compensation programs, which can create an erratic sense of timing for their income. The Robinson Financial Group can help address your liquidity needs and timing of your income by:

Modeling the timing and taxation of income, grants, and bonuses
Managing your portfolio to prepare liquidity between events
Creating cash management strategies to help maximize your return up to Tax Day

We draw on decades of experience solving complex compensation and liquidity concerns to help finance your needs, including major purchases, real estate, short-term liabilities, construction, and more. We connect you with our lending teams with Wells Fargo who provide in-depth banking and lending services, specialized solutions in real estate, and multiple areas beyond.

We also work with you to bring your strategic philanthropic and giving vision to life. Executives find that they can make a positive impact on their community by creating charitable plans centered around organizations or causes that are close to their heart.

We work with you to realize those goals and can establish donor-advised funds for charities or foundations, while also highlighting any applicable tax benefits.

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As specialized advisors for high-level corporate executives, The Robinson Financial Group understands the complexity of executive compensation packages and can guide you through your choices within your company.

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We provide specialized advice to help you navigate company stock, including:

Grants
Restricted and control stock
Restricted Stock Units (RSU)
Qualified incentive stock options (ISO)
Non-qualified stock options (NSO)

We work with you on the timing of holding periods, restrictions, reporting requirements, and trading windows. We also help prepare for the impact of taxation, reporting, liquidity needs, and concentration issues around the stock. Executives often have minimum holding and timing requirements in their packages, so we help you with managing the timing of sales, maintaining these requirements, and hedging the risks where appropriate.

Many executives hold company stock in their retirement plans and are unaware of net unrealized appreciation (NUA) rules and benefits. We apply our vast experience and knowledge in this area to help you take advantage of the tax benefits of this strategy.

We understand deferred compensation: the advantages and pitfalls of employing it, the impact of taxation, and the model timing for liquidity events, for tax efficiency, and to manage risk.
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High-level corporate executives can often classify as section 16 employees, public company insiders, and/or executive officers. These individuals have complex regulations, corporate rules, and disclosure requirements on holding and selling company stock. They also must manage holding periods, holding levels, restricted and control stock, and trading windows, all while navigating pitfalls around insider trading and public perception of those transactions.

The Robinson Financial Group has over 20 years’ experience working with executive officers while navigating these complex high-risk areas. Through our affiliation with Wells Fargo, we regularly work with corporate executives, including Fortune 500 insiders, providing protection and advice around significant internal policy and regulatory risks.

We consult with you on your stock holdings, concentration levels, and risk levels to develop a plan for when sales should take place – and at
what levels. We also help you understand public and internal perception of these transactions while balancing this risk against your personal and family goals.

We have extensive experience and resources to help you with:

Restricted 144 stock and lock-up periods
Regulatory filings around stock and transactions
10b5-1 trading plans, with intention to provide a strong defense against insider trading
Cooling off periods and company disclosures/approvals

We work together with you and your company’s legal counsel to review corporate policies and cooling off periods, holding amounts, and timing requirements, to ultimately help establish a strong and defensible trading plan.

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While many financial advisors offer to manage an investment portfolio when corporate executives receive their bonuses or when their stock options vest, The Robinson Financial Group conducts an executive risk audit to uncover risks to your portfolio and lifelong goals. We then individually manage your investment portfolio to balance the risks associated with concentrated company stock and its industry concentration, which can often be overlooked by other financial advisors.

Unlike most advisors who use pre-packaged model portfolios, we customize a portfolio tailored to your goals and individual risks. We use our extensive experience and trading platform to help position against and actively hedge risk.

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We model the impact of taxes on your liquidity event(s) and design a plan for timing stock sales with the goal of reducing the impact on your overall income. Whereas other advisors take losses at year end to try to reduce taxes, we prepare and model liabilities in advance, allowing us to actively manage your portfolio by engaging in specialized trading strategies and loss harvesting throughout the year.

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Most advisors use a model portfolio they outsource or hand off to outside managers and don’t specifically control themselves, creating little ability to make individual adjustments tailored for you and your specific tax needs. With over 24 years’ portfolio management experience, we maintain full control of your investments – designing, managing, and trading portfolios – using tax-free and tax-efficient investments to potentially yield a greater after-tax return.

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Companies often have restrictions around which positions executives can invest in, when, and whether the executive is able to direct those investments. As fiduciaries, we work to help you understand, then navigate these company-specific restrictions to avoid conflicts of interest and breach of company’s policies or insider trading laws.

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We manage money for corporate executives in the financial industry and other specialized industries, where they are required to have a discretionary-based investment portfolio. Most advisors do not have the qualifications within their firms to have the ability to offer this advanced service.

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Read the example scenarios below to better understand how our services can help corporate executives like you.

Jill is a corporate executive in her mid-50s at a Fortune 500 company. She is an astute and sophisticated investor who values our judgment, objectivity, and investment management capabilities. Jill needed help dealing with a concentrated stock position. She requested our assistance in determining whether the stock was restricted or control, assessing its holding period, and calculating how many shares she could sell. She is also focused on ensuring she has a defense built against insider trading, and wanted a second set of eyes on her portfolio as she was approaching retirement.

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Large, single-stock positions can be a powerful means of creating wealth, but without a proper comprehensive plan, these can also be a very risky way to maintain it. We helped Jill explore a range of strategies to help protect and provide liquidity for the concentrated equity position within the context of her overall investment plan and in the context of her upcoming retirement.

We worked with Jill on a discretionary basis as a fiduciary, allowing her to meet company requirements around trading and company trading restrictions. Our solution was to help Jill set up a 10b5-1 plan during an open window when she did not possess material non-public information. The 10b5-1 plan offered a straightforward way for her to manage her shares while retaining an affirmative defense against insider trading and making the most of her equity compensation benefits. It also maintained alignment with her existing retirement, estate, and wealth transfer goals while offsetting the concentrated stock risk.

Michael is in his early 40s and has been working at a large corporation for over a decade. He recently received a promotion and became a VP-level corporate executive being granted stock options. Michael came to us for guidance to understand the impact of taxes when those options are granted, as well as general advice on how to handle his growing wealth.

After meeting and analyzing Michael’s portfolio, we worked with him to help maximize his yield while insuring safety and liquidity for taxation. We also worked with him to help him understand how the changes in his tax bill would affect the rest of his portfolio, and how his overall portfolio would be affected as his wealth grew with his new position. We helped Michael develop risk management strategies to address his over concentration of company stock. Now, we have established a cadence of meeting with Michael to analyze his retirement goals and help build a more solid estate plan while managing risk around both.

_{These case studies are hypothetical and for discussion purposes only. They are not intended to represent any specific return, yield or investment. Individual experiences referenced above may not reflect the future experience of any one client. The planning process discussed may not be suitable for your personal situation, even if it is similar to the example presented. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Investing involves risk including the possible loss of principal.}

_{Wells Fargo Advisors is not a legal or tax advisor. You should consult with your attorney, accountant and/or estate planner before taking any action.}

_{Any estate plan should be reviewed by an attorney who specializes in estate planning and is licensed to practice law in your state.}

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Your relationship with our team is built on a full understanding of your financial needs and objectives. We deliver the vast resources of Wells Fargo including Wealth Planning, Private Banking, Trust and Fiduciary Services, and Insurance as well as various customized and more traditional lending products.

We are always available to provide advice and guidance for every aspect of your financial life. As we work with you to create a fully integrated and personalized investment plan, we draw on an extensive pool of knowledge and insight.