The team at a publicly traded, Bay Area fund firm is celebrating their coral anniversary.

Neil Joseph Hennessy Hennessy Advisors, Inc. / Hennessy Funds Chairman, CEO / Chairman, President, Chief Market Strategist, Portfolio Manager

Last Thursday, February 1, was the the 35th birthday of Hennessy Advisors, Inc. [profile]. Stockbroker Neil Hennessy, along with a partner who later moved on, started the firm in San Francisco as a broker-dealer on February 1, 1989, and Terry Nilsen (now president and chief operating officer) joined as the first employee that September. The firm is named after Neil Hennessy's father, Edward J. Hennessy, who was also a stockbroker.

CEO Neil Hennessy later moved his company north to Novato, California to be closer to his family. The firm became an RIA in 1990, and in 1996 they launched their first mutual fund, the Hennessy Balanced Fund. The firm IPOed in 2002.

"We took the company public ourselves like a small community bank, with friends and family investments," Nilsen tells MFWire. "Many of those original shareholders still hold HNNA stock today."

Hennessy Advisors has since grown to a 17-person company, with $3.3 billion in AUM across 16 open-end mutual funds and one ETF. Per Neil Hennessy's vision, the team puts an emphasis on community, shareholder value, and teamwork. They've also grown partly through acquisitions, including numerous fund adoptions and mergers. 

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