Pros
In the brokerage space this is a unique place to work in that it is privately owned. The positives of this, in my experience, far outweigh the negatives. With the private ownership structure the company is free to pursue opportunities as they see fit. They also do a real good job in rewarding those that excel because each salary/promotion decision does not have to be weighed against a stock price. It is an agile environment that can contribute to interesting work. The downside of that agility is that it can be hard to track where things are going but better to be agile than stagnant. Other companies may have a clearer corporate strategy but an employee is then constrained by that. That does not always happen here. Overall a pretty lean business but that lends itself to stability of the position.
Cons
The private ownership can lead to some changes in process or structure to be a little slower than if you had a culture of constantly reinventing your business for stock gains. Given the nature of the business some of the long term employees have not necessarily embraced a corporate culture that, if you have worked at other places, is considered the norm. It has always been a results business...and if your results were good how you were forming relationships with your team was not as important as it should be. This is changing but could happen faster. Decentralized structure means that cooperation among locations is not what most people expect for a company this size.