
Joseph T. Rallo
Investment Banker | Co-Founder of EF Hutton
Meet Joseph T. Rallo
Joseph Rallo is an investment banker and co-founder of the revived EF Hutton, a storied stock brokerage firm. Since founding EF Hutton in May 2020, he has led and closed more than $60 billion in complex financial transactions, including initial public offerings, special-purpose acquisition company offerings (SPACs), registered direct placements, merger and acquisition deals, fixed income and private placements, and more.
Rallo has worked on Wall Street for nearly 20 years. Before launching EF Hutton, Rallo held positions of increasing responsibility and impact across the investment banking and securities industry with employers including Citizens JMP Securities, Aegis Capital, and Maxim Group.
Rallo joined Citizens JMP Securities in 2007 and later served as vice president for investment banking there. In 2017, he moved to Maxim Group, where he served as director of investment banking until early 2019. He then worked as co-head of global investment banking at Aegis Capital until April 2020, when he left to co-found EF Hutton.
Rallo has said that a “dynamic environment” and the challenge of navigating high-pressure situations attracted him to the investment banking industry. Over the course of a two-decade career, he has established a reputation for responsiveness, hands-on client management, and creative execution. He has mentored a number of financial professionals who’ve gone into significant success in their own right.
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Joe Rallo’s Six Pillar Approach to Personnel Management
As he attained positions of greater seniority, Joe Rallo developed an innovative approach to personnel management. The approach has six pillars: model the behavior you want to see, be a mentor and invest in juniors’ development, prioritize communication, set clear expectations, delegate effectively, and schedule your day. Rallo has also discussed the importance of having “the right moral and ethical compass to learn, grow and execute” and has encouraged other financial professionals to develop their own sense of morality and purpose.
Rallo co-founded EF Hutton during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, amid a rapid shift within the financial industry to remote work. Despite the risk of launching a new broker-dealer during a period of unprecedented disruption, Rallo has described the decision as an easy one based in “vision and resilience — I saw an opportunity where others saw risk, and I believed in my ability to navigate those challenges.” True leadership, he added, “sometimes means going against the grain and having the courage to pursue what others might shy away from.”
As he and his leadership team worked to scale EF Hutton, Rallo leveraged emerging digital tools to facilitate robust remote collaboration with colleagues, prioritizing business continuity and predictability for the firm’s customers. He has said that those early months saw the rapid development of new strategies to maintain productivity and engagement as the in-person interactions that had long defined the financial services world gave way overnight to digital communications at distance. The shift toward a more flexible and purpose-driven posture proved successful beyond the team’s initial expectations and set it up for success during the years-long period of market volatility that followed.
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Joseph Rallo: Philanthropic Works
Outside of his day-to-day work responsibilities, Rallo and his wife are active philanthropists supporting a range of local and global causes across education, healthcare, and cultural exchange. The initiatives they support include making life better for HIV/AIDS-affected children and families in Africa and India, advancing research and treatment options for childhood cancer and other grave diseases, enabling the development of medical care and social support services to vulnerable populations in Serbia, and lifting up emerging musicians from diverse backgrounds.
Joseph Rallo personally serves as an executive board member for:
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Rallo received his degree from the University of Notre Dame and the Mendoza College of Business. He lives in New York with his wife and children.​
