In this video the partners at Montgomery Securities take a moment to look back and discuss the time they spent working together. The group shares their insights about their careers at the company and discusses what they feel made Montgomery Securities the best.

Among their reminiscences Thom Weisel, Dick Fredericks, Otto Tschudi, and a host of other former Montgomery employees share stories about working together. They speak about late nights with clients and very early mornings and the understanding that “the opening” was never to be missed, despite the goings-on of the night before.

Of special importance to the interviewees were Montgomery’s famous conferences, which cost the company a lot of money to host but which carried a promise of being “paid back” in new business and good times, as Otto Tschudi notes. The last Montgomery conference was more than twenty years ago, but their memory is so vivid that “people are still talking about” the very last conference, according to Mark Lehmann, a former employee interviewed in the video.

What the group believes made Montgomery Securities such a success was the “meritocracy” through which it conducted its business. “I am of the opinion that first-rate people hire first-rate people,” says Bobby Khan. Weisel and employees believed in hiring the very best people in the field. The ones who did well were the ones who stayed at the company and continued to do well, and the ones who didn’t do well didn’t stay, Tschudi adds.

“We were young, we were entrenched, we were out there,” Bruce Potter says of the company’s success and what distinguished them from other firms. Fredericks notes that because the firm was based initially in San Francisco rather than New York, Montgomery employees avoided “groupthink” and thought for themselves.

“We were able to tell a story,” says John Skeen. “That was the theme. We told a story so that the client remembered.”