{"id":740796,"date":"2026-07-03T11:50:55","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T11:50:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/740796\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T11:50:55","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T11:50:55","slug":"ritholtz-wealth-expands-to-29-employee-owners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/740796\/","title":{"rendered":"Ritholtz Wealth Expands to 29 Employee Owners"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Barry Ritholtz and Josh Brown started Ritholtz Wealth Management in 2013, their plan was to build a partnership model in which they would sell a stake internally every year or so.<\/p>\n

In the early 2020s, they began to see their firm\u2014and the registered investment advisor space in general\u2014start to \u201cexplode,\u201d according to Ritholtz. In response, the duo established a broader equity-sharing structure for current and future employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought, we have to do this now before everything just gets to be too silly,\u201d Ritholtz said. \u201cWe set something up so that when people reach a certain point in their tenure with the firm, they qualify to participate in equity.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while many other firms have taken outside capital, the firm has maintained that course, announcing Friday that it has solidified an employee-succession plan that positions Ritholtz to reduce his role over time, while retaining his roles as chairman and chief investment officer for now. Ritholtz sold a further portion of his stake in the move, though the firm declined to provide details.<\/p>\n

Related:Edelman Financial Engines To Appeal Decision in Mariner Lawsuit<\/a><\/p>\n

Day-to-day leadership will continue under CEO Brown, managing partners Michael Batnick and Kris Venne, and President Jay Tini, and the firm will maintain its name brand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI turn 65 this year, and I wanted all of our clients, employees and partners to understand that we have a plan to continue forever, without private equity dollars, regardless of my age,\u201d Ritholtz said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The equity plan has boosted employee ownership over the past year to now include 29 employees on the capital table, which includes advisors, compliance personnel and operations staff. The firm declined to say exactly how many took ownership in 2025, but a Form ADV from the start of the year shows 26 employees with ownership.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a 10-year succession plan that, with this transaction, went into overdrive,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThese are people who are buying stock. In some cases, we make capital available to them, but there are no stock options or grants. These are people who are super bullish on the future of the firm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ritholtz Wealth, whose two founders started out as financial commentators, has grown to $7.6 billion in client assets and 85 employees. The duo are also national financial commentators, with Ritholtz hosting a Bloomberg podcast \u201cMasters in Business,\u201d and Brown being a regular on CNBC and co-host of the podcast \u201cThe Compound and Friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

For their own firm, however, remaining employee-owned has been a central thesis of their setup. According to a Form ADV filed on January 29, Ritholtz sold enough of his stake to drop his ownership from 25% to 49% to 5% to 9%. Meanwhile, Batnick and Venne increased their stakes from 10% to 24%, and Tinni increased from 5% to 9%. Brown retained his ownership of between 25% and 49% of the firm, and the remaining 24 stakeholders own less than 5%.<\/p>\n

Related:Wealth Enhancement Snags Two Teams from Shufro Rose with $1.3B in Assets<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to make sure that there were enough shares available at a reasonable price for everybody, so we can continue to be the largest, fastest growing, 100% employee-owned firm with no outside equity, no outside investors,\u201d Ritholtz said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many RIAs with private equity or minority investment backing have championed their ability to grow<\/a>, scale, and, in some cases, fund succession plans by allocating equity. Brown said Ritholtz has not ruled out a future minority investment, but that at the moment it doesn\u2019t need or want such capital. And when it comes to private equity ownership, he sees more risk than reward.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur superstars are equity owners receiving profit distribution,\u201d he said. \u201cThey don\u2019t have to wait for some sort of third party to come in. They don\u2019t have to wait for Barry to turn 85. We really wanted to make it so that his name could be preserved, and we will never be beholden to anyone.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brown credited Ritholtz for recognizing the benefits of spreading ownership early on, and then for acting on it with this most recent push to 29 employees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Related:Deals & Moves: Savant Wealth Plants Flag In Maine, Cerity Expands to Oregon<\/a><\/p>\n

When asked whether he had been inspired by a specific firm or model for his firm, Ritholtz referred to the investment bank Lazard, which he said survived the financial crisis<\/a> partly because it operated under a partnership model.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone that went public ran into trouble because they were trying to maximize wealth for themselves, as opposed to maximizing satisfaction for the employees, for the clients, for the partners,\u201d he said. \u201cSometimes life is not about, hey, how high can I ring the bell\u2014there are ways to do this that works out better for everybody involved.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Barry Ritholtz and Josh Brown started Ritholtz Wealth Management in 2013, their plan was to build a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":740797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[28,147,530],"class_list":["post-740796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=740796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/740797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}