One of the first things colleagues and friends said they recall about Andrew F. Rowley was his quick and easy smile.
But they didn’t stop there. They also mentioned his sense of humor, his professional nature, his calm under pressure and willingness to help people both professionally and personally.
Mr. Rowley, a longtime veteran in the municipal bond industry and former head of public finance at Morgan Stanley, died on Friday. He was 67.
Fair and collegial, as friends and former colleagues described him, Mr. Rowley mastered the business of pricing in the municipal market while working with muni sales pros and traders, issuers and buyers for more than 30 years. He spent the bulk of his career building Morgan Stanley’s publc finance group.
Linda Fan, a managing partner at the Yuba Group, a consultancy to higher education and nonprofit institutions, worked with Mr. Rowley first at Morgan Stanley and later at her current firm. She met him while she was in banking and he was in syndicate sales and trading.
“He taught me a lot, not just about the market and how to price bonds and structure things,” Fan said. “He taught me a lot about how to treat people. He was someone that everyone thought was really fair. He was a colleague, a role model, a mentor, a boss, a business partner at our firm now, and he was a friend.”
Mr. Rowley joined Morgan Stanley in 1986 from Salomon Brothers. In 1987, he became head of municipal underwriting. He assumed the role of head of public finance in 1996, a position he held until
In 2010, he joined the Yuba Group as capital markets partner, where he helped issuer clients obtain attractive terms for their securities. In addition to Morgan Stanley, Mr. Rowley also worked as a muni underwriter at W.H. Morton (a division of American Express) Lazard Frères and Salomon Brothers. He also served a member of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board in the late 1990s.
Brian Wynne, a co-head of public finance at Morgan Stanley, met Mr. Rowley in 1984 when they both worked in munis at Solly. Wynne was an analyst there; Mr. Rowley was the head underwriter. By 1989, he recruited Wynne to join him at Morgan Stanley.
“He was my mentor,” Wynne said of Mr. Rowley. “He was a trusted colleague. And he was a really good friend.”
The municipals group at Morgan Stanley was small when he arrived. But it catapulted under his leadership to become a major player in the business, Wynne said. And after Mr. Rowley retired, he left Morgan Stanly with a strong culture of integrity and candor, Wynne added, teaching those around him to conduct business in a competitive and fair way.
Most of those in public finance and sales and trading at the firm have been there for 10 to 20 years, Wynne said. “That’s part of Andrew’s culture and the strong sense of community we shared; he was a big part of initiating that and growing that,” he added.
Daniel Keating, who for years ran the muni group at Bear Stearns and is currently chief operating officer at Samuel A. Ramirez & Co., met Mr. Rowley in the mid-1970s, when they both were both underwriters. The two remained close while Mr. Rowley was at Morgan Stanley and Keating was at Bear.
Throughout the early parts of their respective careers, Keating remembers how much bidding for issues was a competitive business. They would often bid in the same group. “He was such a professional,” Keating said of Mr. Rowley. “He was a great help to me. He understood risk and risk-rewards, how to take a risk and what the value of it was. He was always 100% prepared; he had a great feel for the market.”
Keating also praised Mr. Rowley’s people skills, clarity, logic and sense of humor, saying, “He took his job seriously, but he was a very fun-loving guy.”
Mr. Rowley is survived by his wife, Andrea Baker Rowley, and three children: Alexandra Mackey, Catherine Kelly and Andrew Rowley Jr., a vice president in the muni division at Morgan Stanley, along with five grandchildren.
The family is in the process of making arrangements but expects to hold a memorial service in New York sometime in early February. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to: World Ocean School/Roseway, P.O. Box 701, Camden, ME, 04843, or at
