Industry | Financial services |
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Founded | 1904 (original firm; acquired by Shearson Lehman Brothers in 1988 to form Shearson Lehman Hutton) 2012 (revived as EF Hutton America, Inc.) |
Founder | Edward Francis Hutton |
Headquarters | Springfield, Ohio |
Key people
|
Gerald M. Loeb (Former Chairman), Peter V. Ueberroth (Former Director) Robert M. Fomon (former Chairman & CEO), Christopher Daniels (Current President and CEO) |
Website | www |
EF Hutton is an American stock brokerage firm founded in 1904 by Edward Francis Hutton and his brother, Franklyn Laws Hutton. Later, it was led by well known Wall Street trader Gerald M. Loeb. Under their leadership, EF Hutton became one of the most respected financial firms in the United States and for several decades was the second largest brokerage firm in the country. The firm was best known for its colorful TV commercials in the 1970s and 1980s based on the phrase, "When E. F. Hutton talks, people listen," which usually involved a young professional remarking at a dinner party that his broker was EF Hutton, which caused the moderately loud party to stop all conversation to listen to him.
E.F. Hutton & Co. was founded in San Francisco in 1904 by namesake Edward Francis Hutton and his brother, Franklyn Laws Hutton. EF Hutton was one of the first brokerages to open offices in California. In 1906, two years after the firm was founded, its offices were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. In 1924, famed Wall Street trader Gerald M. Loeb joined the firm, ultimately rising to chairman. The firm developed a nationwide retail brokerage network to market its various debt and equity securities. It also operated seasonal offices in Palm Beach, Florida (winter) and Saratoga Springs, New York (summer) to cater to its customers. Morrie Cohen opened Hutton's first one-man office on Maui in December 1969.
Hutton, an entrepreneur who later also became chairman of the General Foods Corporation and for years wrote a newspaper column, led the firm until his death in 1962. In 1970, Robert M. Fomon was appointed Hutton's Chief Executive Officer. Despite the failure or takeover of many of its peers in the 1960s and 1970s, Hutton retained its independence under Fomon's leadership. By the early 1980s, the original E.F. Hutton & Co. had become the principal component of what grew into a group of companies owned by E.F. Hutton Group Inc., listed on the . Other subsidiaries of that Delaware-chartered holding company were E.F. Hutton Trust Company (now "Smith Barney Corporate Trust Company" and owned by Citigroup), E.F. Hutton Life Insurance Company, and E.F. Hutton Bank. The Hutton companies also managed many mutual funds and other investment vehicles, some of which were separately incorporated and/or registered, and participated actively in corporate mergers and public offerings of securities. In 1976, Western Union partnered with E. F. Hutton & Co.