Longtime municipal strategist Stephen Winterstein will leave the research side of the municipal and fixed income market to assume a newly created role as municipal bond client sales and product manager at MarketAxess, the firm confirmed.
Winterstein, most recently managing director and chief municipal fixed income strategist at Wilmington Trust Investment Advisors Inc., will begin his new position at the New York-based electronic trading platform “in the coming weeks,” spokesperson Kyle White told The Bond Buyer Friday.
No further details on Winterstein's official start date were available, White said.
With three decades of municipal fixed income portfolio management, trading, and research experience, Winterstein brings a wealth of buyside experience to MarketAxess, which provides a suite of credit products and technology solutions for a broad marketplace of more than 1,500 institutional credit market clients.
Winterstein will support the firm's efforts in building investor client sales opportunities and advising on product enhancements for municipal bond trading on the MarketAxess platform, according to White.
He will be joining the 18-year-old firm when the electronic trading platform is experiencing a rapid growth in municipal bond trading as the industry “begins to increasingly adopt electronic trading,” according to White.
In 2018, $5.9 billion worth of municipal debt traded on MarketAxess — which was a 47% increase compared with 2017, according to White.
With offices in London, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, São Paulo, Hong Kong and Singapore, the platform provides access, efficiencies and transparency for dealers, as well as improvements in trade execution and portfolio level performance for investors.
The firm’s global market participants reach a broad group of counterparties, and offer trade execution technology for price discovery and increased market liquidity.
Its products for institutional credit markets seek to add efficiency and reduce transaction costs, helping clients navigate increasingly complex regulatory environments.
At Wilmington Trust, Winterstein was responsible for establishing the municipal bond portfolio management and research processes, as well as setting the municipal bond strategy for the firm’s institutional and individual clients.
Before joining Wilmington, he was managing director of municipal fixed income with PNC Capital Advisors, LLC in Philadelphia for more than 12 years, where he established and led a team of 15 municipal fixed income professionals dedicated to municipal bond management for high-net-worth individuals and institutional clients.
A well-regarded and highly recognized strategist for his influence in areas such as municipal bond indices, evaluations, performance attribution, and risk management, Winterstein is the 2016 recipient of the National Federation of Municipal Analysts Industry Contribution award.
In 2017, he was elected for a fourth time to the Smith’s Research & Gradings Municipal All-Star Team in the municipal strategist category.
He was a member of the board of governors for the National Federation of Municipal Analysts from 2016 to 2018, and is currently a member of the advisory committee for the Brookings Institute’s Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy Annual Municipal Finance Conference.
Winterstein is a member of the board of directors for the Municipal Analysts Group of New York, serves as the secretary for that organization, and is a member of the S&P Municipal Indices Working Group. He is co-chair of the technical advisory committee for Municipal Bonds for America, a nonpartisan coalition of municipal bond issuers and state and local government officials in Washington, D.C. He is also a member of the Municipal Impact Coalition's advisory board.
He is also an active member of the Investment Company Institute’s municipal securities advisory committee. He is a co-founder of the Philadelphia Area Municipal Analyst Society and served as its president in 2018, and a member of the board of governors of the Bond Club of Philadelphia.
Winterstein holds a master's in business administration from Lehigh University and a bachelor’s in economics from Millersville University.
