Gedale "Dale" B. Horowitz, 87, a mentor and leader in the securities industry for six decades — all of it at Salomon Brothers and its successor firms — and a former chairman of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, died on April 2 of a long illness.
He served a third of his career in his most recent position as a senior managing director of Citi’s Institutional Clients Group, a role from which
Horowitz, a securities banker, began his lengthy, 60-year career at Citi predecessor Salomon Brothers & Hutzler, joining the firm in November 1955. He later became a general partner in 1967, served on its executive committee, and was a member of the board of its holding company, Salomon Inc., from its incorporation in 1981 until the sale of the firm to Travelers Group in 1997.
His industry experience led him to establish or become a member or head of some of the security industry’s most widely known organizations.
Horowitz was a longtime member and twice chairman of the U.S. Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee. He originally served as a member from 1979 to 1991 and again from 1996 to 2000, and served as its chairman in both 1986 and 1987.
In 1967, he founded the Public Securities Association, which was also known as The Bond Market Association. He then served as the chairman of the BMA in 1979, and later as chairman of the Securities Industry Association in 1991. The organizations later merged into what is now known as the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA).
One of his other prestigious industry roles included being appointed by the Securities and Exchange Commission as a member of the original Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board where he served as its chairman in 1977.
Locally, he was instrumental in the financial recovery of New York City and New York State from 1974 and beyond, and served as lead banker for the New York Municipal Assistance Corporation — for which he was later a director from 1988 to 1994 — and to New York State in returning them to the public market in 1976 and 1977.
He later also served as chairman of the New York State Local Government Assistance Corporation from 1991 to 1994.
Among his noteworthy accomplishments at Salomon Brothers, from 1994 to 1996, he led the group that assisted Orange County, Calif. in exiting bankruptcy and returning to the capital markets.
In 2016, for his extensive efforts in assisting local governments during fiscal turmoil, Horowitz received The Bond Buyer's second annual Jim Lebenthal Infrastructure Champion Award. He and municipal bond expert and salesman Lebenthal, who died in 2014, worked together during New York’s fiscal recovery.
Outside the securities industry, Horowitz was active professionally with various higher educational, community, religious, and service organizations, most notably a trustee of Barnard College for 34 years who then became a Trustee Emeritus in 2009. He led the college’s Budget & Finance Committee and structured Barnard’s debt financings for all of its major buildings.
In addition, he was a trustee, Chairman Emeritus and emeritus member of the executive committee of the Board of Trustees of North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System from 1995 to 1997, where he and his late wife, Barbara, were benefactors. Additionally, he was a past-President of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, Inc.; member of the Board of Visitors of Columbia Law School, and vice chairman of the Board of Trustees of The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc.
In addition, Horowitz served as a member of the investment committees of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, and Phi Beta Kappa.
A graduate of Bronx High School of Science, Horowitz was a graduate of both Columbia University and Columbia Law School, and a member of the New York State and American bar associations.
He was predeceased by his wife in 2011.
He is survived by his daughter, Ruth, and son, Seth, and two grandchildren.
