RiverFront History

• • The river of RiverFront is one of America's most historic—the James. Our company traces its roots to the well-known and influential regional brokerage firm Wheat First Securities, whose headquarters overlooked the James in Richmond, Virginia. In founding RiverFront in Richmond in 2008, we preserved that relationship with our favorite river— recognizing as well that it is an apt metaphor for the fluidity of the dynamic investment model that is central to our investment approach.

  • 1990s The principals of RiverFront first work together as a team, engaged in creating portfolios for Wheat First advisors to use in building client portfolios.

  • 2001 The merger of Wachovia Bank and First Union Bank leads to the formation of Wachovia Securities, where our team finds themselves in key roles with what was becoming one of the largest securities firms in America.

  • 2002 The core of the current RiverFront Investment Team comes together at Wachovia Securities as the Advisory Services Group (ASG) under the leadership of Michael Jones. ASG was charged with providing asset allocation advice, investment strategy and research across all brokerage platforms, ultimately having asset allocation discretion over $75 billion in client assets.

• • 2007 Wachovia purchases A.G. Edwards and begins its move to St. Louis, Missouri. Our team declines the invitation to move to the banks of the Mississippi. At the time of the decision, our team managed approximately $8 Billion in Compass Portfolios, the genesis of the current RiverFront models.

  • 2008 RiverFront Investment Group is founded by the same team who has been working together since the 1990s. Key strategic partners, Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc., and Private Advisors, LLC, supply RiverFront with equity capital to help ensure a financially sound future. The employees of RiverFront also invest personal capital and maintain a majority equity stake in the company. Our investment team along with our long-term portfolio track records forms the basis of our newly launched firm.

  • 2009 RiverFront's assets under management cross $1 billion. A growing group of financial services firms add RiverFront to their managed money platforms. RiverFront successfully navigates client portfolios through the financial crisis and AUM continues to grow.

  • 2010 RiverFront's assets under management cross $2 billion. In addition to its successful separately managed account offerings, RiverFront begins to sub-advise a series of mutual funds. RiverFront is also asked to provide two global tactical ETF indices to Invesco PowerShares.

  • 2011 RiverFront continues to create jobs in the Richmond community, adding investment and business development employees to ensure RiverFront properly manages and supports its growth. RiverFront relocates to new offices in downtown Richmond – closer to the James River. RiverFront ends 2011 with approximately $3 billion in assets under management.