Wall Street Trailblazer Listens to Her Gut Instincts

Muriel Siebert’s business strategy is simple: “When I see a challenge, I put my head down and charge.”

During her 46-year career on Wall Street, Siebert has blazed a trail of firsts, including being the first woman to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and the first female New York superintendent of banking. She has made her mark not by rigidly following the Street’s rules, but by heeding what she refers to as her gut instincts.

Today, as chairwoman, chief executive and president of Siebert Financial Corp., the 68-year-old presides over 138 employees in more than a dozen U.S. offices. Her firm pulls in more than $36 million in annual revenue from its financial services.

Peers have called “Mickie” Siebert--a nickname since first grade--rebellious, madcap, tough and flamboyant. They savor stories about her colorful personality, salty speech and over-the-top adventures--like the time she rescued a homeless woman from muggers by swinging her handbag like a buzz saw.

Frequently accompanied by her long-haired Chihuahua, Monster Girl, Siebert holds court at her office in the red oval “lipstick building” on 3rd Avenue at 53rd Street in Manhattan.

A competitive innovator since childhood, when she was crowned Cleveland’s yo-yo champion, Siebert attended Case Western Reserve University but often cut classes to play bridge. She dropped out in 1952, lured by New York City’s excitement. With $500 in savings, Siebert pointed her Studebaker toward the Big Apple, and applied for work.

The United Nations turned her down because she wasn’t bilingual. Merrill Lynch rejected her because she lacked a college degree. But Siebert was determined to land a good job, so during an interview at Bache & Co., she claimed she had received her Case Western Reserve sheepskin.

The firm hired her and gave her a choice: She could earn $65 a week as a trainee security analyst, or $75 weekly as a bookkeeper. For Siebert, it was a no-brainer. She loved researching industries and firms. And she had a knack for divining hidden tales within balance sheets.

“Put a page of numbers before me, and they just light up--they tell me a story,” she said.

Siebert worked her way up the analyst ranks, accepting spots at various Wall Street firms, some of which paid her male colleagues twice her salary.

A client suggested that Siebert consider buying a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. With a seat on the exchange, she could launch her own brokerage. She loved the idea, but knew it wouldn’t come cheap: She would have to raise $445,000 for the privilege. Her bank refused to loan her the money to do it, and nine potential sponsors turned her down.

Siebert was determined to make it happen. But when she finally collared two individuals for sponsorship, she found herself in a Wall Street Catch-22.

The exchange changed its membership rules and ordered Siebert to secure a bank guarantee for $300,000 of the seat’s $445,000 price. And banks refused to loan her money until the exchange agreed to admit her. She focused her efforts on the reluctant lenders; she only needed one to say yes. It took months, but she succeeded and made history. In 1967, the New York Stock Exchange’s membership rolls would include 1,366 men and Mickie Siebert.

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Things didn’t get easier. She couldn’t attend business luncheons at all-male private clubs. At the Union League Club, she was asked to enter through the kitchen and take the back stairs to a board meeting. Some business colleagues, unaware she was Jewish, peppered their conversations with anti-Semitic jokes.

Siebert strategically handled each obstacle. She waited two years before visiting the New York Stock Exchange’s private luncheon club; by then, her colleagues would not be threatened by her presence.

“I wanted to prove to people that I had bought a seat, not for the publicity but to run a business,” she said.

She endured her treatment at the Union League Club, but a few male associates, inspired by her fortitude, demonstrated solidarity by accompanying her on the tortuous back stairs route.

When individuals made anti-Semitic comments, Siebert didn’t confront them. Instead, she sent them cards that read: “Roses are red, violets are bluish, in case you didn’t know it, I’m Jewish. I enjoyed lunch, Mickie.”

In 1975, the SEC changed its regulations, allowing brokerage firms to negotiate their previously fixed commissions. Siebert responded right away, drastically slashed her prices, and in the process, became one of the nation’s first discount brokers. Breaking an age-old taboo, she advertised heavily. One full-page newspaper ad showed her cutting a $100 bill in half.

Unamused, her clearinghouse, which processes and guarantees trades between buyers and sellers, dropped her.

“They sent me a telegram, and it was not nice,” she said.

She had only 60 days to find another agency to clear her transactions, or her firm could be dropped from the NYSE. In a cliffhanger, Siebert negotiated a 30-day extension; another clearinghouse then picked up her company.

As a discount house, Muriel Siebert & Co. flourished. But in 1977, New York Gov. Hugh Carey asked Siebert to become the state’s superintendent of banking. It was a job that appeared to hold little glory. Not since the Depression had so many problems plagued New York’s banking industry. Thrift institutions and banks were failing; a major municipal credit union was near collapse.

Loving a challenge--and this was certainly one--Siebert accepted the job and put her company into a blind trust, to be managed by her employees. She took a huge pay cut to $65,000 a year for the responsibility of monitoring several hundred banking institutions with more than $400 billion in assets, and overseeing a staff of 500.

Siebert had to act fast to prevent a statewide financial crisis. She engineered a series of reorganizations and mergers. She used state funds to take over the Municipal Credit Union, which, despite its more than $130 million in assets, was in immediate danger of collapse. She lobbied state legislators to reevaluate New York’s tax rates in order to keep major banks from relocating out-of-state. And she rallied for more liberal foreign bank charters and the creation of international banking zones, which eventually lured more than $100 billion in international funds to New York.

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Siebert was widely hailed for her creative problem-solving. During her five-year tenure, not one New York bank failed.

“I tell you, there’s poetic justice in things,” Siebert said. “I regulated the bank that wouldn’t write the letter [to guarantee my NYSE seat loan].”

But when she returned to her firm, she encountered chaos. Customers had transferred their accounts to other firms. Two employees had resigned, allegedly taking her client lists with them.

Resisting two buyout offers and a multimillion-dollar Wall Street job offer, Siebert turned her attentions to rescuing the firm from a slide into obscurity. She took over two bankrupt rivals, and in a few years, was again generating millions of dollars in commissions.

Her reputation as a newsmaker hasn’t waned. Four years ago, she raised Wall Street analysts’ eyebrows by taking her firm public in an unusual way. Deciding against having an initial public offering of stock, Siebert merged with a publicly held furniture company, J. Michaels Inc., which was going out of business. She purchased the firm’s corporate structure but not its assets and liabilities, said Dan Jacobson, vice chairman of Siebert Financial Corp. Then she reestablished the company shell as Siebert Financial Corp., which would become the parent company of Muriel Siebert & Co. She retained 97.5% of its stock.

Some considered the move more common for a penny stock company.

“There had been a practice amongst penny stocks of forming shell companies and doing reverse mergers into them as a way for [their officers] without credentials to not have to file full financials [with the SEC],” Jacobson said. “But she did file full financial statements. This was a totally different scenario.”

Siebert said she opted for this more controversial route for two reasons: At the time, she wanted to go public in order to increase her financing options for potential takeover targets. But she didn’t need the cash infusion that an IPO would bring. She defends her decision as a savvy one.

Today, she maintains more than an 85% stake in Siebert Financial.

And last year, Internet buzz about her firm’s aggressive online trading prospects sent Siebert Financial’s stock price soaring to $70.63. This year, Siebert Financial’s shares have been trading between $4 and $20. The shares closed Friday at $4.59, down 16 cents, on Nasdaq.

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Recently, Muriel Siebert Co. purchased the retail brokerage accounts of William O’Neill & Co., the parent company of Investors Business Daily. And in mid-October, to build a greater online presence and offer augmented financial services and education to women, Siebert took over Herdollar.com and Women’s Financial Network at https://www.wfn.com.

“You can make a lot of money in our business,” Siebert said. “If you do, there’s a great opportunity to give back. My mother, God bless her, raised me [to believe that] when good things happen, you owe, you have an obligation.”

After the 1991 and 1994 Southern California earthquakes, she offered no-interest loans of $1,000 to $15,000 to female entrepreneurs whose businesses were damaged or destroyed by the quakes.

She also established the Siebert Entrepreneurial Philanthropic Plan to donate 50% of sales commissions on certain securities to charities. To date, SEPP has given more than $4 million to organizations such as the American Red Cross, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Senior Resources and Neighborhood Services of New York.

This year, Siebert sponsored and developed a basic personal finance course for New York City high schools. She hopes to launch the program nationwide. She continues to promote, support and encourage women in business and politics.

Throughout her career, Siebert has overcome obstacles and set precedents without a spouse’s support. She chose to remain single, though she acknowledges there were a few matrimonial close calls along the way.

“I would say, right now, that it would have taken a very unusual man to have tolerated the inconveniences I would have imposed on the marriage,” she said.

“I think her motto has been, ‘No one owns me,’ ” said Patricia Francy, treasurer and controller of Columbia University and a longtime associate of Siebert’s. “She’s tried to take away the roadblocks [for women] that she’s had in her own career.”

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Tips for Getting Ahead

Muriel Siebert, chairwoman, president and CEO of Siebert Financial, has enjoyed a long career as a successful investor, advisor and company owner. She offers five tips for working people to increase their financial security:

1. Pay off high-interest debt, specifically credit cards. If you pay only the minimum, you’ll be paying for last night’s dinner for the next 15 to 20 years.

2. Don’t have cash sitting in a non-interest-bearing checking account. Use an interest-bearing money market fund with unlimited free check-writing privileges. Let your money work for you.

3. If you are the sole support for yourself, your children and/or your parents, consider purchasing a disability insurance policy to give you income in case you have a long period of disability. These types of policies are relatively cheap.

4. Don’t believe the integrity of information in chat rooms on the Web. There is no accountability.

5. Try to invest the maximum allowable amount in your IRA or 401(k) tax-advantaged retirement account. The government allows annual contributions to be made with pretax dollars and the income compounds tax-free until withdrawn.