When E. F. Hutton Talks, People on an Airplane Listen

E. F. Hutton & Co. was an American stock brokerage firm founded in 1904 by Edward Francis Hutton, his brother Franklyn Laws Hutton, and later led by well known Wall Street trader Gerald M. Loeb. The firm was best known for its commercials in the 1970s and 1980s based on the phrase, “When E. F. Hutton talks, people listen” (which usually involved a young professional remarking at a dinner party that his broker was E.F. Hutton, which caused the moderately loud party to stop all conversation to listen to him).

A brokerage firm, or simply brokerage, is a financial institution that facilitates the buying and selling of financial securities between a buyer and a seller.

Corporate [check] kiting involves the use of a large kiting scheme involving perhaps millions of dollars to secretly borrow money or earn interest. While limits are often placed on an individual as to how much money can be deposited without a temporary hold, corporations may be granted immediate access to funds, which can make the scheme go unnoticed. This was the case with E. F. Hutton & Co. in the early 1980s.

Benton & Bowles (B&B) was a New York-based advertising agency founded by William Benton and Chester Bowles in 1929.