(Bloomberg) — Kathleen Moriarty, a lawyer who performed an instrumental function within the creation of the primary exchange-traded fund, has died. She was 69.
Her dying was introduced by Chapman and Cutler LLP in New York, the place she was senior counsel within the company and securities division. No trigger or different particulars have been offered.
Moriarty spent nearly 30 years breaking floor within the fastest-growing phase of the money-management trade, guiding merchandise to market reminiscent of the primary hedge-fund replicator, the primary bodily commodity ETF and the primary leveraged providing.
ETFs are low-cost, funding automobiles that monitor an index or a basket of securities and commerce like equities on an trade. Moriarty constructed a status because the go-to lawyer for anybody in search of to promote an progressive ETF that regulators could scrutinize carefully.
“I’ve represented most everyone who’s completed an uncommon ETF,” Moriarty stated in a 2014 interview.
She earned the nickname “SPDR Lady” for her work on the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Belief (ticker SPY), which State Avenue Corp. launched in 1993, and on subsequent SPDR merchandise. With $357 billion in belongings, SPY presently reigns as the biggest and oldest ETF within the $6.5 trillion trade.
“Kathleen was a pioneer within the funding administration trade and was on the forefront of a few of our trade’s most impactful innovation of the final 30 years,” Morrison Warren, co-leader of Chapman’s Funding Administration Follow Group, stated in a press release. “All through her time at Chapman, she was a humble and considerate colleague and universally acknowledged as a kind-hearted and beloved particular person.”
Reggie Browne, the co-global head of ETF buying and selling and gross sales at GTS often called the Godfather of ETFs, referred to as Moriarty “one of many ETF trade’s GOAT Tremendous attorneys” in a LinkedIn put up.
“She was on the helm of almost each upward inflection level in ETF product improvements,” he wrote. “She was a brilliant good individual with a heat coronary heart and welcoming spirit.”
A Chicago native, Moriarty moved together with her household to New York when she was 5 and lived in Manhattan for many of her life. She graduated from Smith Faculty in Northampton, Massachusetts, with a level in psychology and artwork historical past, and earned her legislation diploma from the College of Notre Dame close to South Bend, Indiana, the place she met her husband, Robert John Keefe.
Previous to Chapman, Moriarty labored at legislation companies together with Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP and Carter Ledyard & Milburn LLP, in response to her LinkedIn web page.
It was throughout her time at Katten Muchin Rosenman that Moriarty represented Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss of their first try by a US applicant to register a Bitcoin ETF with the US Securities and Trade Fee.
Whereas that endeavor was unsuccessful — US regulators nonetheless have but to approve a bodily backed crypto ETF — Moriarty went on to characterize corporations utilizing blockchain expertise and different funds trying to spend money on digital belongings.
“I really feel honored and blessed to have recognized and labored with Kathleen,” stated Deborah Fuhr, co-founder of ETFGI, who served on the board of Ladies In ETFs with Moriarty. “She was concerned in lots of new improvements. At all times gave freely of her time. Was a pleasant, heat, pleasant pioneer within the ETF trade. She can be missed.”
–With help from Christopher Condon.