Muriel Siebert & Company - History

Muriel Siebert & Co., Inc., has been in business and a member of the New York Stock Exchange since 1967, longer than any other discount brokerage firm.

Muriel Siebert, our founder, chairwoman and president, was the first woman ever to become a member of the Exchange.

On May 1, 1975, the first day that New York Stock Exchange member firms were permitted to negotiate commissions, Siebert became one of the very first to announce that it would become a discount brokerage house.

In 1977, Ms. Siebert placed her firm in a blind trust for five years to accept an appointment as New York State’s first woman Superintendent of Banks, with responsibility for the safety and soundness of all banks in New York State. This was the highest position in banking supervision or regulation ever obtained by a woman at the time.

In 1982, when she returned, Ms. Siebert concentrated on growing the business into a unique entity among discount brokerage firms – a retail discount brokerage with an active capital markets division that provides high-quality brokerage services to institutional investors and investment banking services to corporations. In 2004, the firm substantially expanded the scope of its capital markets operations by enhancing its trading and underwriting capabilities with the addition of seven capital markets professionals. The investment banking team has acted as co-manager or underwriter in more than $50 billion of global equity offerings and $128 billion in global corporate bond offerings since January 2002, alone. Backed by the latest information technology and systems, our trading desk and investment bankers offer value-added services to some of the nation’s largest investment managers, corporations and public retirement systems.

Over the years, the close affiliation of the retail business with a capital markets group has given thousands of independent investors opportunities to purchase new-issue securities.

In 1996, the Siebert Brandford Shank & Co. LLC affiliate was established. This company provides tax-exempt investment banking and financial advisory services and has offices in Atlanta, Anchorage, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Fort Worth, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Oakland, Orlando, San Antonio, Seattle, Washington D.C. and Weehawken. It is the largest woman/minority owned and operated municipal bond firms in the U.S. and ranked one of the nation’s top 25 municipal bond underwriters, overall, for the past five years.

In order to take advantage of opportunities to expand by purchasing other organizations, Siebert completed a reverse-merger with an already existing public company in November, 1996. Since then, the renamed Siebert Financial Corp. has continued growing. Siebert is a Nasdaq-traded company under the symbol SIEB.

Muriel Siebert & Co., Inc., has been actively involved in the consolidation in the discount brokerage business in recent years and continues to well positioned as opportunities may present themselves going forward. In the 80’s, Siebert purchased the retail discount brokerage accounts of Bevill Bresler & Schulman, Inc., and Parr Securities Corp. In the 90’s, the firm purchased the retail brokerage accounts of William O’Neill & Co., the Los Angeles-based institutional equities and financial data firm which is the parent company of Investors Business Daily. In 1999, Muriel Siebert & Co., Inc., continued to expand by merging with Andrew Peck Associates, Inc., a privately held brokerage firm serving high net worth investors and headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey. Through its merger with Peck, Siebert established an operations center and offices in Jersey City.

In 2002, the firm purchased certain Florida-based retail accounts of TradeStation Securities and State Discount Brokers which Siebert serves through its Boca Raton branch. In 2003, the firm continued its expansion by purchasing the discount brokerage accounts and certain assets of Your Discount Broker, Inc., a Boca Raton-based firm that had been one of the few locally-owned discount stock brokerages in South Florida. In 2004, Siebert acquired the retail brokerage accounts of New York City-based Wall Street Discount Corp., a majority of which reside in the New York tri-state area and Florida where Siebert has a strong presence.

The company opened its first out-of-state branch in Beverly Hills in 1992 and its second in Boca Raton in 1994. Today, Siebert maintains its headquarters in Manhattan and branches in Beverly Hills, and Boca Raton, Naples, Palm Beach and Surfside, FL. With a large well-established retail account base, over 100 employees, and revenues greater than $31 million a year, Siebert continues to be in the forefront of change and innovation in the discount brokerage marketplace.