Will People Listen?

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that E.F. Hutton is making a comeback in the brokerage business. Once upon a time, back in the 1970s and 1980s, Hutton was one of the most recognized names in Wall Street, due to the impact of its long-running commercial slogan: "When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen."

People listened to E.F. Hutton for a long time - it was old enough to have had its offices destroyed by the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 - until 1988, when the firm merged with Shearson Lehman, then a subsidiary of American Express. The new company was called Shearson Lehman Hutton. That firm became Smith Barney Shearson in 1993 when it was bought up by Smith Barney, an old-line investment bank with a well-known tagline of its own: "We make money the old-fashioned way. We earn it."

That seemed to be the end of the Hutton name, until a couple of old E.F. Hutton employees decided to revive it. It remains to be seen whether people are still willing to listen.