Longtime investment banker George Joseph McLiney, Jr., passed away unexpectedly at age 87 Saturday.
The founder of McLiney and Company, which was acquired by SAMCO Capital Markets in 2019, McLiney was also a devoted husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather, an avid golfer and a successful Kansas cattleman.
“He loved life, and that carried over to his business, to working with his children and grandchildren,” said his son Eddie McLiney, senior managing director of public finance at McLiney and Co., now
After following his father into the municipal bond business with George K. Baum, McLiney founded McLiney and Co. in 1965.
He was an old school investment banker who believed firmly in logging the miles to show up for clients in person.
“We want [clients] to know that if it takes extra work, so what. We’ll do it,”
“You can’t do it over the telephone, you’ve got to be there,” he said.
“We still show up in person,” Eddie McLiney told The Bond Buyer on Friday. “Occasionally there will be a Zoom call, but even during COVID, I was on an airplane no matter what. To this day, my nephews are on the road putting miles on their car visiting the towns face to face. That’s how he was raised, that’s how I was raised, that’s how they are going to be raised.”
On Friday, Nov. 15, the senior McLiney was in the office. At 87 years old, he never stopped coming in to work.
“He would get involved in every project,” Eddie McLiney said, though he noted George also gave his children and grandchildren room to shine.
McLiney and Co. was a pioneer in the use of
McLiney said his father led the firm’s work on that front, starting off with all of the allocations in Kansas and Missouri.
“He’s the one who really spent the time with the law and the regulations on how to make these things marketable,” he said, recalling how the firm ended up fielding a flurry of phone calls from senators’ aides asking them to help lawmakers expand QZABs to other states. Eddie wound up flying out to Washington, D.C. to explain how the firm was doing things.
“It just pleased him to no end that he was the one who figured it out first, and got us in the door,” Eddie McLiney said of his late father. Before long, “we were doing QZABs in 35 states,” he said.
“He adored this business,” said another son, Joey McLiney, senior managing director at McLiney and Co. “He could drive across Missouri and Kansas and point to different things that we financed. It was pretty neat.”
Many of the senior McLiney’s five children and 19 grandchildren followed him into the business.
“He’s easy to follow,” Joey McLiney said.
“His entire philosophy was just, ‘Do the right thing.’ Most people don’t want to work for a community of under 2,000 people… But if not us, who? It’s those communities that we’ve always worked with, the ones that are out there in the country. It takes a lot more time, a lot more hand-holding,” he said.
“He always considered it a privilege,” Joey McLiney said.
“I saw the enjoyment he took in it,” Eddie McLiney said. “The grandchildren saw it… If you treat your customers right, you do what’s best for them, you will be handsomely rewarded. But it is all about the customer. And that was always his motto.”
Joey McLiney noted that his father “never underwrote a bond that’s defaulted, and so far we’re running a perfect track record.”
Still, “if he wanted to be known for something, he would want to be known as a Catholic,” Joey McLiney said. “He loved discussing his faith. It was never separated [from his work] — the two went hand in hand.”
George McLiney, Jr. is survived by his wife of 63 years, Laurie McCaskill McLiney, his five children, 19 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
He attended Mass daily, and Joey McLiney believes his father’s peaceful if sudden exit is the way he would have wanted to depart this world.
“It was the perfect way to go,” Joey McLiney said. “He was still golfing… He was at work Friday. And we were laughing. We were always laughing.”