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Forbes and Shook have cancelled the rest of their 2026 rankings after a $6 million gift to Forbes' former editor-in-chief, which leaves thousands of advisers holding paid-for accolades they now have to decide whether to keep displaying.
The Investor · Invest desk
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The licensing line is the more interesting part of this, more than the gift itself. Publications do not, on the evidence available, get paid to hand out the honour; they get paid afterwards, when the winner buys the right to say so in public [6], and a business whose revenue arrives only after the trophy is awarded has an incentive to award a great many trophies. Ross Gerber of Gerber Kawasaki put the mechanism plainly: every incentive to have as many awards as possible, and to give them to as many people as possible [7]. Nobody has alleged that Forbes or Shook sold rankings [6], but the conflict does not need that allegation to hold.
So price the badge. A Forbes Top Wealth Advisor submission means interviews, surveys, a background check, and quantitative disclosure of assets under management and annual revenue [5], which is real staff time, and then a licensing fee to use the result [6], and then, per Gerber, a marketing asset that generates little business and functions mostly as a morale item for the person who won it [8]. That is a cost line with a soft return in the best case. In the Los Angeles metro, where by Gerber's account so many advisers appear on the same lists that the ranking confers no distinction [9], it is a cost line with roughly no return at all.
The live decision is retrospective, and the two practitioners quoted by American Banker land on opposite sides of it. April Rudin, the marketing consultant, says take every Forbes mention down now, on the grounds that the story broke in The New York Times, a consumer publication, and is therefore reaching clients rather than only the trade [3][4]. Gerber says he has no plans to strip the old posts [10], and Joe Anthony of the PR firm Gregory argues advisers gain little from the scrub [11]. Both can be right about different firms: the scrub is cheap for a boutique with forty pages of site content and expensive for a national with a decade of press releases, and the asymmetry runs the other way on discovery, because it is the larger firm whose compliance file a regulator is likelier to open.
This is probably wrong, but the more useful version of the question is not reputational at all. Advertised credentials sit inside marketing-review regimes; a badge whose issuing process is now publicly contested is a badge someone eventually has to defend in writing, and the cost of defending it is not knowable in advance while the cost of deleting it is. On that arithmetic the scrub is the cheaper option for anyone who cannot say what the award added to the pipeline. A few things could happen from here. Forbes could restructure the methodology, restore the 2027 list, and let the badges quietly regain value. Or the rankings stay dark, the accolades age into obvious dead weight, and firms that deleted early look prudent. Or nothing happens to anyone, and Gerber's do-nothing position turns out to have been the correct read on how little clients ever cared [12]. What would prove the thesis wrong is simple enough to check: a firm that can show award badges moved conversion. Rudin says she doubted the rankings mattered to clients before any of this [12], and no one in the source produces the number.
What the reallocation looks like matters more than the deletion. Gerber's firm is putting the time into YouTube video that clients actually watch [13], which is what the awards budget was competing with all along.
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Revelations that Forbes' former editor-in-chief received a $6 million 'gift' from the founder of Shook Research, Forbes' outside partner in compiling its rankings, have tainted honours awarded in previous years; Randall Lane was removed from the editor-in-chief position after the story of the gift emerged.
Forbes and Shook Research are cancelling their industry rankings and events for the rest of 2026, meaning advisers will not receive honours they otherwise might have this year.
Marketing consultant April Rudin, founder and CEO of her consultancy, recommends firms immediately remove any mention of past Forbes awards from their websites and marketing communications.
Rudin said the awards are 'forever tarnished by this entire story,' especially given that it broke in The New York Times, which she characterised as a business-to-consumer publication.
To be named a Forbes 'Top Wealth Advisor,' advisers must sit for interviews, fill out surveys, undergo a background check, and submit quantitative data about assets under management and annual revenue.
Publications such as Forbes do not make money for giving particular firms awards, and there are no allegations of pay-to-play against Forbes and Shook, but they do make money after bestowing honours by charging recipients for licensing, effectively selling the right to brag in public.
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1 article · August 28, 2026
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Strong on advice, second-hand on the scandal
The $6 million gift that gives this story its force is not reported here — it is relayed from The New York Times, and American Banker's own sentence about Randall Lane's removal breaks off mid-clause. What is first-hand is the counsel: three named practitioners, on the record, contradicting each other about whether to scrub the badges. That makes the advice well sourced and the premise borrowed.
One institutional act, one anecdote
Two real events sit in this story: Forbes and Shook pulled the rest of the 2026 calendar, and one Santa Monica CEO killed one LinkedIn post. Beyond that, nothing is counted — no tally of firms taking badges down, no client walking away, no regulator moving. The report's own aside that SEC-permitted testimonials have stayed rare since late 2022 suggests the recommended replacement is not being adopted either.
Liability asserted, exposure undemonstrated
Our framing casts a licensed Forbes badge as a live liability for every firm holding one. Two of the three experts quoted decline to go that far: Anthony points out the honours stay listed on Forbes' site whatever a firm deletes, and Gerber, who did pull a post, is leaving his archive alone. Only Rudin says take them down. Regulators can act on a misstated honour — but this reporting shows no instance of anyone doing so, and no client noticing.
The money flow is named, including on the advisers' side
Unusually well lit for a marketing story. American Banker spells out the mechanism — issuers earn nothing for granting an honour and everything from licensing it afterwards, which is exactly Gerber's point about having every incentive to hand out as many awards as possible. Worth adding what the piece leaves implicit: two of the three voices telling firms how to respond, a marketing consultant and a PR firm owner, sell the services a badge-free firm would suddenly need.
Enough to know the pause; not what firms will do
One trade outlet, a borrowed and truncated account of the payment, and named sources who disagree on the only practical question. That is sufficient to say the rankings have stopped and why, and insufficient to say what thousands of firms will do with the plaques already on their walls.