OPPENHEIMER HOLDINGS INC. Annual Report 2025
Oppenheimer at 145: A Perspective
While even I have not been here since the beginning, my perspective of the firm’s history is much longer than most. My history with the firm goes back to the Spring of 1985, when I was looking to find a new outlet for my energy and experience since I had just retired from a 20-year stint at Cowen & Co. and over 10-years as Managing Partner.
During my brief retirement, I established a small broker-dealer to maintain my registrations, opened a modest uptown office, and began investing for my own account. While the markets remained challenging, I found them insufficiently engaging and started exploring other opportunities. In early Summer 1985, a longtime friend introduced me to Edward A. Viner & Co. The firm had recently been acquired by the Canadian holding company Goldale Investments Inc. and was struggling following the untimely death of an arbitrageur who had been largely responsible for its reported profits.
Why Viner? It was self-clearing, had a small retail business, some capital markets activity, and a surprisingly low capital requirement. I flew to Toronto to meet Kenneth A. (“Doc”) Roberts. We quickly developed a rapport, and he agreed to sell me 51% of Goldale’s voting shares and appoint me CEO of Viner.
And so it began: a transformation over more than 40 years that became Oppenheimer today.
It started with renaming the holding company Viner Holdings, followed by a series of acquisitions of regional firms:
– Edward A. Viner & Co. (NY)
– Buetti Cannon & Co. (NY)
– Freedom Securities Inc. (Edison)
– Laidlaw A Co. (NY)
– Fahnestock & Co. (NY)
– B.C Christopher (Kansas City)
– Reich & Co. (NY)
– W.H. Newbold’s Son & Co. (Philadelphia)
– NY & Foreign Securities (NY)
– First of Michigan Corporation (Detroit)
– Buy & Hold (Jersey City)
– Josephthal & Co. (NY)
– Oppenheimer & Co. (NY)
– CIBC Capital Markets (U.S.) (NY)
Through disciplined growth and a commitment to innovation, the firm has expanded steadily to where we stand today, with almost 3,000 employees and offices around the world, guided by the same values that have long defined us.
Each step expanded the firm’s reach, adding financial advisors, specialty trading capabilities, regional public finance, and investment banking, and was accompanied by a series of name changes from Edward A. Viner to Fahnestock & Co. in 1988 and ultimately to Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. in 2003. We absorbed firms with historic antecedents, some going back to before the Civil War. Our geographic footprint grew steadily, first across the Mid-Atlantic, then the Midwest, New England, and the Southeast, and finally, with the acquisition of Oppenheimer, to every major population center in the United States. By then, we had become a truly national firm with a broad U.S. presence and the foundation to expand globally.
They say, “timing is everything in life.” Well, sometimes you don’t get it exactly right. On the eve of the Great Financial Crisis, CIBC came to us and asked if we would be interested in buying their Capital Markets business in the U.S. We thought they were giving it away. It had great capabilities in Research, Trading, and Investment Banking, with revenues in excess of $200 million. Closing in January 2008, however, within a year in the wake of the Financial Crisis, revenues of that business shrank by more than 50%. Despite the timing, the acquisition brought exceptional people and a strong foundation in several important businesses, which we rebuilt and strengthened over time.
Fast forward to the years since. We have continued to invest in technology, modernize our infrastructure, and adapt to an evolving economic and regulatory landscape. Through disciplined growth and a commitment to innovation, the firm has expanded steadily to where we stand today, with almost 3,000 employees and offices around the world, guided by the same values that have long defined us.
In February 2025, we announced a meaningful change in leadership. As I stepped aside, Rob became the new CEO. He was, and is, well prepared to lead. He knows every element of the firm and our people, and has presided over record-setting results this past year.
We are on the crest of a wave that began well over a century ago and that will carry us on well into the future: with new horizons, new successes, and most of all, the same sense of family and community that has sustained us in recent decades.
I couldn’t feel better about where we are or where we are going.