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<title>History · Osborne Partners — Since 1937</title>
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<div class="hero__eyebrow">Anno Domini MCMXXXVII — Anno Domini MMXXVI</div>
<h1 class="hero__title">Eighty-eight years,<br>thirteen recessions,<br><em>one method</em>.</h1>
<p class="hero__sub">
Osborne Partners began as Hunter Stephenson Investment Counsel in 1937 — the trough year of
the Great Depression — and has compounded the wealth of American families through every
market cycle since. This is the firm's history, told in the moments that mattered.
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<div class="timeline__year">1937</div>
<h3 class="timeline__title">The firm is founded.</h3>
<p class="timeline__body">
Phelps Hunter and Jack Stephenson establish Hunter Stephenson Investment Counsel in San
Francisco — one of the very first independent investment advisers in the country. They
choose this work in an industry then dominated by product-pushing brokers, betting that
wealthy California families would prefer counsel to commission. They were right.
</p>
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<div class="timeline__year">1942</div>
<h3 class="timeline__title">War economy, patient capital.</h3>
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Through the Second World War, the firm holds course on long-only equity ownership of
durable American businesses. The thesis — that great companies, bought reasonably and
held patiently, compound through anything — survives the war and becomes the firm's
architectural principle.
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<div class="timeline__year">1965</div>
<h3 class="timeline__title">A second generation.</h3>
<p class="timeline__body">
The first wave of clients begins transferring stewardship to their children. The firm
invests heavily in trust, estate, and generational planning capabilities — a discipline
that today remains a defining specialty of the practice.
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<div class="timeline__year">1973–1982</div>
<h3 class="timeline__title">Stagflation and discipline.</h3>
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The Carter inflation tests every long-only manager in America. The firm leans further
into multi-asset construction — adding fixed income, real assets, and disciplined cash
management. The framework that emerges is the direct ancestor of today's portfolios.
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<div class="timeline__year">2000</div>
<h3 class="timeline__title">Justin McNichols, CFA, joins as principal.</h3>
<p class="timeline__body">
Justin McNichols arrives from Wells Fargo Asset Management, where he had been head of
equity research and a member of the national growth equity team managing more than $1B
in assets. He becomes a principal of the firm and, eventually, Chief Investment Officer.
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<div class="timeline__year">2001</div>
<h3 class="timeline__title">A new name. The same firm.</h3>
<p class="timeline__body">
Hunter Stephenson Investment Counsel rebrands as Osborne Partners Capital Management —
reflecting an expanded partnership, a broadened service set (full wealth planning,
family office, institutional counsel), and a continued commitment to the founders'
independent, fiduciary ethos.
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<div class="timeline__year">2008–2009</div>
<h3 class="timeline__title">Global Financial Crisis.</h3>
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The firm's investment team writes more letters in eighteen months than in any previous
decade. Portfolios are stress-tested, allocations rebalanced, and clients counseled
against panic. The approach — rebalance, do not retreat — produces meaningful
outperformance against the median competitor over the recovery years that followed.
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<div class="timeline__year">2011</div>
<h3 class="timeline__title">Sonia Von Berg arrives.</h3>
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Sonia joins the firm and would later be appointed Chief Operating Officer. Now in her
fifteenth year, she has overseen the firm's expansion of compliance, technology, and
operations infrastructure — the unsung work that lets the front office stay focused on
clients.
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<div class="timeline__year">2018</div>
<h3 class="timeline__title">Sonia Von Berg, COO.</h3>
<p class="timeline__body">
Sonia is named Chief Operating Officer. Under her stewardship, the firm modernizes its
client portal, reporting infrastructure, and document management — preserving what made
the firm great while quietly upgrading the rails it runs on.
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<div class="timeline__year">2020</div>
<h3 class="timeline__title">COVID drawdown.</h3>
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In thirty-two trading days, the S&P 500 falls 34%. The investment team holds course,
takes losses harvest opportunities aggressively, and rebalances toward names that emerge
stronger. By year-end, client portfolios are at all-time highs.
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<div class="timeline__year">2024</div>
<h3 class="timeline__title">Crossing $2B AUM.</h3>
<p class="timeline__body">
The firm crosses two billion dollars in stewarded assets — earned, almost entirely, by
referral. The team grows to twenty stewards, ten of them owners, with an average tenure
of twenty-four years per employee.
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<div class="timeline__year">2026</div>
<h3 class="timeline__title">Where you find us today.</h3>
<p class="timeline__body">
Two offices, San Francisco and Menlo Park. Clients in thirty states. A board comprising
Justin McNichols, Sonia Von Berg, and Charles Else. Quarterly Wealth Reports written by
the team and distributed to clients only. New introductions, almost without exception,
from the families we already serve.
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<div class="section__eyebrow">From the founding documents · 1937</div>
<h2 class="section__title">"Counsel, not commission."</h2>
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<p>
The original incorporation papers of Hunter Stephenson Investment Counsel describe a firm
intended to advise — without selling product, without taking trade commissions, without
accepting outside capital. In 1937, this was a radical posture. Today it is what every
serious investor expects, and what most still cannot find.
</p>
<p>
Eighty-eight years on, the posture is unchanged. Osborne Partners is independent and
employee-owned. We charge only for advice. We do not sell product. We are paid the same
whether we trade your account or leave it alone — and we have built the firm on the
conviction that, more often than the industry would have you believe, leaving it alone is
the right thing to do.
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<blockquote>
"Wealth, properly tended, becomes a quiet kind of freedom — for a generation, and the one
after."
</blockquote>
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