A veteran financial analyst and one of its top producers has left UBS AG for Smith Barney in Woodland Hills. Robert G. Jacobs, a 12-year veteran of UBS, came on board at SB as senior vice president, wealth management and a member of the director’s council, which represents the top producers in the company, taking the bulk of his UBS accounts with him. In the past year at UBS, Jacobs produced about $2.6 million in commissions and fees, managing more than $400 million in client assets. Jacobs is joined by Philip Byrne, his team member at UBS who had been at the brokerage for about four years. Smith Barney, a unit of Citigroup Global Markets Inc., employs about 40 investment advisors at its Warner Center offices, a number that has remained relatively unchanged for many years, said Robert J. East, first vice president and wealth management branch manager for Smith Barney. “We brought over four recruits last year and a couple the year before,” East said. Jacobs, who began his career at what was then Shearson/Lehman as a trainer, also worked for now-defunct Drexel Burnham Lambert and Prudential Securities, which has since merged with Wachovia. He was with Paine Webber when that firm merged with Zurich-based UBS in 2001. At the time, UBS had plans to hire some 10,000 client advisors in the U.S., but has since backed off of those plans, according to published reports. Jacobs said one of the things that attracted him to the company was that, Citigroup has maintained the Smith Barney brand, which dates back to the 19th century, since it acquired the company in the late 1990s. UBS has re-branded the Paine Webber name since it acquired the company. The market for financial advisors has been changing as baby boomers age. The first of the generation, which numbers close to 80 million in America, hits 60 this year, putting added emphasis on wealth management, wealth transfer and retirement planning. At the same time, the recent stock market performance has changed the way many investors approach the market. “A lot of people went along in the late 1990s and didn’t give a lot of time to their investments,” said Jacobs. “When it stopped working, a lot of people realized it was time to start looking at their investments again.” Smith Barney culls its client base from CPA firms and other direct referrals. Jacobs, who said his performance puts him in the top 1 percent of investment advisors, said that about 90 percent of his clients from UBS have joined him in his new venture, and he expects more to do so in coming months.