Description
D.A. Davidson is an employee-owned broker-dealer headquartered in Great Falls, Montana, United States. The company offers "integrated brokerage, capital markets, money management, trust and wealth management services" and is one firm within a larger, diversified financial services company called D.A. Davidson Companies.
History
The company started in 1935 when David Adams Davidson joined E.J. Gibson Inc. The family would later buy all of the stock of the firm and later rename it D.A. Davidson & Co. David's son, Ian, joined the firm as its third employee in 1958, after graduating from the University of California-Berkeley with a master's thesis that outlined how to build a successful securities firm away from the financial center of Wall Street. He used his thesis as the basis of the firm's strategy for later growth and development.
Ian B. Davidson was named D.A. Davidson President in 1968 and then was elected Chairman and CEO in 1970 after his father's death. He served as CEO during a period of expansion and diversification for the company.
In 1975, D.A. Davidson bought Financial Aims Corp., a financial planning firm. This acquisition would start the company's growth into the present day. In 1986, the company formed a new holding company - then called DADCO - as the parent company of D.A. Davidson and Financial Aims. The formation of the parent company set the stage for another acquisition, of Trust Corporation of Montana, which was later renamed D.A. Davidson Trust Company. The parent company, DADCO, was renamed Davidson Companies in 2000 and then renamed again to become the present-day D.A. Davidson Companies.
The company acquired regional brokerage firm Crowell, Weedon & Co. of southern California in 2013 and SMITH HAYES of Nebraska in 2016. In 2013, D.A. Davidson Companies and its subsidiaries adopted a new logo showing a green bison with a golden sunburst.
Today, D.A. Davidson remains based in Montana, and together with its sister firms that comprise D.A. Davidson Companies, it is one of the largest companies with headquarters in Great Falls.
