Hightower Taps Gurinder Ahluwalia as President

In a statement about the leadership shuffle, Hightower Chairman and CEO Bob Oros said Ahluwalia’s and DiBiasio’s appointments, in particular, reflect the firm’s proactive approach to growth and scalability: “Hightower Advisors continues to expand its executive team by adding talented leaders who can support our business and client objectives.”

With Ahluwalia and DiBiasio’s appointments, “we’re supporting the structure of growth and at the same time ensuring that we can continue to drive momentum for our advisors in a way that is proactive and scalable,” Oros explained in a statement shared with ThinkAdvisor.

Thanks to a string of recent acquisitions — including a dozen inked in 2023 alone — Hightower’s advisor community now includes over 140 advisory businesses in dozens of states and Washington, D.C. As of Sept. 30, Hightower’s assets under management were roughly $131 billion.

Despite the momentum, other recent hiring news from the RIA aggregator firm saw it cut its staff by about 5%. The layoffs were applied across the corporate organization but did not affect advisors directly, according to the firm, and there were no changes among the firm’s executives as part of the internal adjustments.

Pictured: Gurinder Ahluwalia