Family and friends are remembering longtime muni veteran Wilson White as a bright and driven go-getter who helped write the book — quite literally — on the municipal bond market.
White died Nov. 16. He was 90.
In 1954, after graduating from Harvard College, White entered Wall Street, starting as an analyst and trader and then a manager. In 1961, he co-founded a municipal bond firm, which later became Wilson White Inc.
White published three municipal bond textbooks, entitled “The Municipal Bond Market: Fundamentals: A Handbook for Professionals,” “The Municipal Bond Market: Basics” and “The Municipal Bond Investment Advisor: Tax-Exempt Investing for High-Bracket Individuals.”
He also lectured extensively and served as an expert witness for municipal bond cases all over the country, even after retiring in 1992. He served as a fixed income consultant through 2015. He was a member of the Municipal Bond Club of New York.
Catherine Murray, White’s daughter, said her father was very knowledgeable about munis and shared his wisdom with those he mentored.
“Very few people on the planet ever knew more about munis than my old man. He was one of the definitive guys in the market forever,” she said.
“The people he worked for, and then eventually worked for him, put munis on the map,” Murray added.
She said her father was family-oriented and enjoyed the finer things in life: opera, Shakespeare, travel. During his life, White published many works of fiction and traveled extensively, even living in Paris and Rome in his 80s.
“He just lived the good life. When you look in the dictionary under ‘bon vivant,’ that's my father,” she said. “He lived life to the fullest right to the end.”
Michael Lynfield, a financial advisor at Janney Montgomery Scott and former colleague of White, described White as an intelligent and talented man.
“Before computers, he knew everything about municipally going. He traded off his own knowledge,” Lynfield said.
Lynfield recalls spending a day with White back in 1984 at White’s firm and being impressed with the entire operation, which specialized in municipal bonds, a rarity at the time on Wall Street.
“He was on the forefront. He was informed, educated, a very good trader,” Lynfield said of the man who taught him much of what he knows about the muni market.
“He used to sell these bonds to me that nobody really knew about. We did very well. Only one came unstuck in hundreds and hundreds of trades. We made a lot of money in very depressed, low-grade municipal bonds.”
White is survived by his sister, Patsey White, his three children, Catherine Murray, William White and Elizabeth White, and five grandchildren.
