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With a business administration degree from Grand View College, Steve DeVenney fell into the investment side of finance with his first job at the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines. He then moved on to Piper Jaffray & Co. in 1994, and nearly 10 years later, Bob Westlund encouraged him to leave with him and become business partners at Raymond James & Associates Inc.’s office at 6601 Westown Parkway in West Des Moines. Now he is replacing Westlund as branch manager.

Will you step away from working with clients?

No, that won’t change. Bob Westlund and I have a business partnership, and so even when he was managing the office, he still handled client accounts. We’ve always backed each other up.

As you take over, is there something different you would like to do?

Our headquarters are in St. Petersburg, Fla., and we’re relatively new still to this market, so name recognition is still a big deal. We’ve done really well on the national level recently. In the last 30 days, J.D. Power and Associates, they have their annual client satisfaction survey. We were named No. 1 in the country for that. So that kind of thing helps, just to get it out to the public.

Have you always lived in Des Moines?

Grew up in Marshalltown. I came here to play basketball and baseball at tiny Grand View College.

What attracts you to this business?

I think it’s a great business because most of the time we deal with people who are successful business owners or highly paid executives, so we’re working with people who are motivated and successful. The other thing that’s always fascinated me about what we do, no matter what goes on in the world, it generally has some impact on some market, whether it’s the price of oil or the price of gold or the stock market. It really forces you to have a good grasp of current events.

How have you been affected by the current economic situation?

I would say what we’re going through is one of the toughest ones we’ve seen in quite some time…. I think it caught maybe more people by surprise this time. But we know historically seven out of every 10 years are going to be good for stocks. If you talk to any seasoned investor, in almost all cases, they have more money in their account now than they did 20 to 25 years ago. But whenever you go through it, it’s certainly painful.

Has your company seen a slowdown?

Raymond James as a firm, our growth has been very good. We’re growing revenues across the country at 20 percent plus per year. We have benefited recently because of some of our competitors’ mistakes and we’ve been able to hire a lot of advisers across the country away.

Why are you doing so well?

It’s basically the conservative nature of how we run our company. Sixty-five percent or so of our revenues come from just dealing with individual investors and corporations. Where some of our competitors got into trouble was taking some of these large bets with their own money. They used their own capital to buy some of these subprime loans and those turned out to be not worth as much as what people thought.

What do you like to do outside work?

My wife, Tracy, and I have three children. They’re very active in sports, so a lot of coaching, mostly basketball and baseball for my son. And through Holy Trinity (Catholic Church), I think I served eight or nine years for our church’s finance council.

What motivates you?

I think being a parent. That’s a huge motivator for me to do the right thing. From the time they’re born until my 18-year-old daughter is about to leave home, you can tell your kids to do what you want them to do to, but they will always do what they see you doing. It’s an awesome responsibility.