History
At Southeast, our history defines who we are both in character and performance. The vision of an independent-minded broker, Southeast is the culmination of years of hard work and persistence of doing the right things the hard way. It’s this line of thought that has brought Southeast to the place it is today. As of October 2023, Southeast has 65 brokers nationwide and is registered in 48 states.
Our origin story.
Our founder, Frank Black, was one of seven children growing up in Rock Hill, SC whose father passed away when he was 12 years old. Frank joined the Navy when he was 19. After four years of service, just prior to discharge, a shipmate from Michigan showed Frank a catalogue from Michigan State showing tuition to be $350 a year. Frank went to Michigan and got a job working nights at Oldsmobile sweeping floors, performing electrician’s duties, driving cars off the assembly line, basically every job in the plant to be able to go to college during the day.
During Frank’s sophomore year a Merrill Lynch broker came into his business class and explained what a stock was and what a stock broker does. Frank immediately went out and bought just one share of stock and instantly fell in love with the market. He spent the next three years dreaming of becoming a Merrill Lynch broker and gaining the experience needed to make it a reality. With one year sales experience at Burroughs Corporation as training under his belt, Frank became a broker with Merrill Lynch in 1971. An instant success, Frank opened more accounts than anyone in the country in his first year at Merrill. He became sales manager after five years and subsequently moved on to E.F. Hutton and J.C. Bradford trying to find the right fit for his philosophy of how business should be done. This is when, in 1988, Frank recruited A.G. Edwards to come to Charlotte, NC with him as the manager, opening the first office for A.G. Edwards in Charlotte in the company’s 104 years of existence.
In 1990 Frank opened an independent office of Raymond James with his operations manager Jeanette K. Roberts through the Robert Thomas Securities division of Raymond James. In just four years they grew the office from one to 24 brokers and were the second largest branch in the Robert Thomas division in terms of revenue. With this story and the amount of experience behind him, Frank founded Southeast Investments on July 1st, 1997 in Charlotte, NC. Which brings us to today… As of October 2023, Southeast has 65 representatives nationwide and is registered in 48 states.
