Dale Horowitz, upon receiving the second annual Jim Lebenthal Infrastructure Champion Award, paid homage to his longtime friend.
"He believed strongly in his clients but he believed in good finance. That's a lesson that could be learned sometimes in the current markets," Horowitz said of Lebenthal, a longtime municipal bond champion who died in November 2014. "The reason a lot of you are sitting in this room is because of people like Jim."
Horowitz, 83, a senior managing director at Citigroup, and a
Alexandra Lebenthal, daughter of Jim Lebenthal and co-chief executive of Lebenthal Holdings LLC, presented the award.
"Like an apple hitting me on the head last summer, I thought the perfect person to receive this award would be Dale Horowitz, not just because Dale was a great friend of my Dad's, but what he represents for this industry," she said.
"Everyone in this room and the entire municipal finance industry stands on his shoulders. I truly believe, and
Horowitz's career has spanned 60 years with Salomon Brothers, Salomon Smith Barney and Citigroup. A graduate of Columbia College and Columbia Law School, Horowitz joined Salomon in 1955 and became general partner in 1967.
As a Salomon Brothers partner during New York's dire financial crisis, Horowitz was a driving force in the underwriting group that structured the first bonds sold by the Municipal Assistance Corp. MAC, a state agency, sold almost $10 billion in bonds to keep the city solvent.
The dark days serve as a stark reminder, Horowitz told Tuesday's gathering.
"You are the people who provide infrastructure for this country. And you are the people who have the responsibility to finance this infrastructure and finance it properly," he said. "To finance it properly is crucial. It's not new. We went through this in New York City; $6 million worth of short-term paper and not one penny in the bank to pay for it."
He later served a five-year term through 1994 as director of MAC, which dissolved in 2008.
Horowitz was also the chief financial advisor on the Salomon Brothers team for Orange County, Calif., which emerged from a 1994 Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing and received two investment-grade ratings in 1998.
"He was there in the challenging times as well, in the trenches," said Alexandra Lebenthal.
Alan Anders, deputy director of the New York City Office of Management and Budget, won last year's award.
