Britehorn Securities: A Purpose-Built Broker-Dealer for Modern Dealmakers

Britehorn Securities is an independent broker-dealer built specifically for the professionals who operate at the center of complex dealmaking. Co-founded by Brett Story and Bobbi Babitz Armstrong, the firm was born out of firsthand frustration with traditional broker-dealer platforms that failed to serve the needs of M&A advisors, investment bankers, and institutional placement agents. While building Britehorn Partners as a middle-market investment bank, the team encountered systems designed primarily for retail brokers and wealth managers—platforms burdened with irrelevant compliance requirements, opaque pricing, and limited, impersonal support. Recognizing both the gap and the opportunity, Britehorn Securities was created to offer a streamlined, transparent, and highly responsive alternative. The firm provides a purpose-built compliance infrastructure that allows deal professionals to focus on what matters most: executing transactions. Today, Britehorn supports a growing network of over 70 independent dealmakers and has earned industry recognition as a Top Broker-Dealer by Financial Services Review.

Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, with an additional office in Delray Beach, Florida, Britehorn Securities serves a client base that includes prominent investment banking firms such as Raincatcher, The Advisory IB, Peakview Partners, Car Wash Advisory, National Business Brokers, and CDX Advisors. As a FINRA- and SEC-registered broker-dealer, the firm acts as the compliance backbone for its affiliated professionals, handling regulatory obligations with speed and precision.

Core services of Britehorn include sponsorship for Series 7, 79, 82, and 63 licenses, supervisory oversight, state licensing maintenance, AML compliance, email archiving, and continuing education compliance. With onboarding completed in under a week and transaction compliance turnaround as fast as 24 hours, Britehorn emphasizes efficiency and white-glove service. The firm also offers specialized solutions such as SEC Rule 15a-6 chaperone services, Fleischer Agreement structuring for FINRA Rule 2040 compliance, and access to in-house regulatory legal counsel—ensuring clients can navigate complex regulations while closing deals with confidence.

In conversation with Brett Story, Co-Founder of Britehorn Securities

Britehorn Securities was built “by investment bankers, for investment bankers.” How does this founder-led, industry-specific approach create a competitive advantage over traditional retail-focused broker-dealers?

The difference is fundamental. Our service-first approach does not rely on outsourced personnel in time zones around the world, nor are we trying to build a software business masquerading as a broker dealer and forcing reps into a tech stack that doesn’t fit their practice or attempts to foster “collaboration” in a forced and inefficient way.

We stripped all of that away. Because our founders are practicing investment bankers with real transaction experience, we know exactly which regulatory requirements are material to our clients’ businesses and which are simply noise. We’ve also lived the urgency of a live deal, the complexity of a cross-border transaction, and the frustration of waiting days for compliance sign-off on a time-sensitive engagement. Because we’ve experienced it, we engineered our platform to eliminate those friction points — something you can’t replicate by staffing a compliance team with people that have never closed a deal.

Your platform offers onboarding in under a week and compliance turnaround as low as 24 hours. What operational innovations allow you to move at this speed while maintaining rigorous FINRA/SEC standards?

Speed and rigor are not opposites — the right infrastructure makes them reinforcing. Because we work exclusively with institutional M&A and private placement professionals, our compliance framework is precisely scoped. We’re not reviewing suitability recommendations to retail investors. Our supervisory systems are purpose-built for the transaction types our clients actually conduct, which eliminates enormous review complexity.

Operationally, all books, records, and communications archiving are maintained in the cloud with geo-redundant storage, allowing our team to act quickly regardless of geography. We maintain both in-house regulatory expertise and outside regulatory legal counsel, enabling us to turn around complex questions without external delays. Every registered representative has a dedicated compliance manager who already knows their business and deal pipeline — so when a new engagement comes in, we’re not starting from scratch. FINRA and SEC standards are non-negotiable throughout, and we hold ourselves to the same regulatory scrutiny as our clients.

Your clients consistently mention responsive service and no impersonal call centers or foreign outsourced staff. How do you scale white-glove, dedicated support while growing your registered representative base?

The key is intentionality about growth — not growing faster than you can serve well. We are a boutique by design, focused on being the best independent broker-dealer for a specific high-value segment of the market, not the largest. Every registered representative is assigned a dedicated compliance manager, directly reachable by phone and email. Moreover, senior Britehorn staff is equally as accessible for issues ranging from complex regulatory questions, to deal support and expertise in helping our clients win new mandates, to deal execution via Britehorn Partners’ long established network of buyers and investors. No call centers, no ticketing queues, no automated responses, no outsourced personnel in a time zone half way around the world.

We bring on new representatives thoughtfully, ensuring every relationship we form is one we can support at the standard we’ve set. Growth has been steady and organic — from 25 registered representatives at the beginning of 2024 to over 70 today.

With Britehorn Partners as your sister investment bank, how does having firsthand dealmaking experience make you better at serving other investment bankers and placement agents?

It is our most important differentiator. Britehorn Partners is a full-service middle-market investment bank — we run live M&A processes and close real transactions across technology, business services, software, and more. We are not a compliance firm that reads about investment banking; we are investment bankers.

When a registered representative calls with a question about a live deal, we understand the context at a transactional level, not just a regulatory one. We know the timeline pressures, the market norms, and what’s at stake. Britehorn Securities also provides broker-dealer oversight for Britehorn Partners’ own transactions — meaning we hold ourselves to the same standards we apply to our clients. That alignment is real, and our clients feel it.

What does the future hold for your company and its customers?

We’re focused on continued, deliberate growth of our registered representative community. The independent investment banking space is expanding rapidly — experienced professionals are leaving large institutions to build independent practices, and demand for a purpose-built broker-dealer platform has never been higher. We will keep investing in compliance infrastructure, team, and technology to ensure every new representative experiences the service quality our long-tenured clients rely on. We’re also deepening our specialized offerings in cross-border dealmaking and expanding our educational content, having established Britehorn as a go-to resource for independent investment banking professionals navigating an increasingly complex regulatory landscape.

Meet the leader behind the success of Britehorn Securities

Brett Story is a Co-Founding Partner of both Britehorn Partners and Britehorn Securities. With over 20 years of experience spanning corporate law, M&A advisory, and institutional capital markets, he brings an unusually deep perspective to the firm he built. Brett began in corporate and securities law before transitioning into investment banking, where he has spent his career advising business owners, management teams, and boards on selling their businesses and raising capital — and then executing those transactions. This background informs everything that drives the Britehorn Securities broker dealer business, and Brett routinely assists registered representatives with engagement agreement negotiations, regulatory and legal questions, deal best practices, and even testified as an expert witness on behalf of a registered representative seeking to recover a fee for a closed deal.