A quality controller in the firm’s custody department, she looks after a block of portfolios for clients and prepares an annual report detailing their accounts for the year.
She began her career at Forsyth Barr in 1961, joining the three original partners and five other staff members. Back then, her job was to transfer handwritten ledgers over to a booking machine.
‘‘The day I walked into that office, I knew it was just more than a place of work,’’ she said.
She joked about falling in love with and being married to the firm.
‘‘I love getting up in the morning and knowing I’m going to the office with my friends and colleagues, and I know there’s another wonderful day ahead.
‘‘Every day must be like that.’’
Miss Braumann’s milestone also coincided with Forsyth Barr’s own 90th anniversary this year.
The stockbroking and financial advisory firm was established in Dunedin in 1936 by founder Robert ‘‘Peter’’ Forsyth Barr.
It began its life as a small sharebroking firm in Dunedin’s Express Company Building.
After World War 2, he was joined by partners Murray Sidey and Keith Skinner.
The business was broadened in the 1970s from its core stockbroking operations — the company said it was the first into the New Zealand market with a broad range of investment solutions, including a fixed interest monitoring service.
The 1980s saw the introduction of cash management and nominee services, followed by portfolio management services and a low-cost retirement fund in the 1990s.
Forsyth Barr now operated 25 offices across the country with more than 600 staff and provided investment advisory and portfolio management services covering more than $30 billion worth of clients’ investments.
Miss Braumann said she was grateful to be able to keep doing what she loved at the now 90-year-old firm.
‘‘Tired is not in my vocabulary.’’
She recalled once working through the night in the midst of the 1987 stock market crash, and the installation of their first computer, in 1979, which was ‘‘a godsend’’.
She worked alongside Mr Barr himself, who she said was a lovely man.
‘‘If it was raining, he’d come out to me and say: ‘Val, it’s raining today, you can’t walk out to your car. I shall drive you’.
‘‘He and his wife, they had no family and I think Mr Barr tended to look upon us like three daughters and he was quite interested in what we were doing.’’
Forsyth Barr managing director Neil Paviour-Smith said Miss Braumann had worked an ‘‘incredible stint’’ at the firm. She even had a room named after her at the Dunedin office.
He questioned if there was anyone else in New Zealand who had worked continuously at one organisation, in one location, for as long as her.
When he joined the firm, 28 years ago, it was much smaller. It became apparent to him that Forsyth Barr was a business that looked after itself. About half of all brokers failed after the 1987 stock market crash, mainly because their offices were in ‘‘complete disarray’’, Mr Paviour-Smith said.
‘‘Well-established, kind of very gentrified old firms failed because they didn’t have their houses in order.
‘‘Forsyth Barr did, and that was a feature of a particularly dark time.’’
Forsyth Barr was ‘‘a great Dunedin story’’, Mr Paviour-Smith said.
Not many companies reached their age and stage, even globally. The business was totally dependent on its clients’ trust, which had enabled them to grow and continue to evolve.
‘‘This is their life savings — it’s as important to them as their family and their health and so on.
‘‘Trust is so important.
‘‘To sustain that over a period of time is something that we reflect on with great pride.’’
