E. F. Hutton & Co.

E. F. Hutton & Co.

E. F. Hutton & Co. was an American stock brokerage firm founded in 1904 by Edward Francis Hutton, his brother Franklyn Laws Hutton, and later led by well known Wall Street trader Gerald M. Loeb. Under their leadership, 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 United States. The firm was best known for its 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 E.F. Hutton, which caused the moderately loud party to stop all conversation to listen to him).

Hutton was one of the first brokerages to open offices in California. 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.

Edward Hutton led the firm until his death in 1962. By the early 1980s, the brokerage house he founded had become the principal component of what grew into a conglomerate of companies owned by E. F. Hutton Group Inc., listed on the New York Stock Exchange. 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.

As a result of several mergers, the remains of the old E.F. Hutton are now part of Smith Barney, a subsidiary of Citigroup. However, on January 13, 2009, Citigroup itself announced that it would sell 51% of Smith Barney to Morgan Stanley, creating Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, which was formerly a division of Citi Global Wealth Management.

E.F. Hutton was revived in April 2012 by a management team composed of executives of the former firm and Stanley Hutton Rumbough, grandson of E.F. Hutton.