Longtime municipal trader Tom Greene is retiring after more than a half-century in the business.
Greene is retiring from Wintrust Wealth Management, where for more than a decade he was institutional fixed income manager and head of the institutional municipal bond desk. Greene
“I stayed there for so long because they treated me nicely,” Greene said of William Blair, crediting former colleague Karl Velde with hiring him in the first place. “I had many opportunities, but I liked staying there… I enjoyed the sales people; I helped rebuild the sales force three times. I felt a loyal obligation because they treated me so well.”
Wintrust, he said, was a similarly good fit: “I was thrilled to have the opportunity to work at Wintrust, and they’ve been super nice,” he said.
Greene initially retired in his late 60s but soon grew restless, and his friends in the business told him he was too young to be a retiree. So when the opportunity at Wintrust presented itself, he leaped back in.
The muni veteran first came to Chicago as a young rugby player. Friends set him up with job interviews, which led to his first role as an assistant trader.
“Ever since then, I felt an obligation to pay it forward,” he said. “Anytime anybody would come to me and ask if they could send somebody in to interview, or somebody would call and ask about a job opportunity, I was always willing to take time to do it. Because people took time to do it for me.”
Greene launched his career at William Blair in 1973 and became head of municipal trading, underwriting and sales there in 1984.
Colleagues described him as a kindhearted social butterfly who quickly became a pillar of Chicago’s public finance community and extended the same graciousness to entry-level workers as he did to CEOs.
“I’m speaking on behalf of many people in our industry,” said Pat Fox, who works in municipal bond trading for JP Morgan in Chicago. “Tom is liked by everybody. He’s just one of the best people that could ever represent our business. He’s really built up Chicago and helped maintain it. He’s going to be missed, and he will leave a big hole.”
Greene was long the organizer of a popular annual muni industry gathering in Chicago. He took it over in the late 1980s; modernized it, making it more informal; and got sponsors like Assured Guaranty to pick up most of the costs.
“I’d never ask for an RSVP, so that if people wanted to stop by, they could,” he said.
He also presided over the Municipal Bond Club of Chicago for many years and led the club’s Chicago Bond School since 1997.
Greene noted he has now passed the social organizing torch to Oppenheimer’s
“When I got into the business, [bond school] was how I met Tom,” said Josh Shneyderov, managing director at Sapient Capital and now Greene’s son-in-law. “He’s really been instrumental in expanding networks… He’s worked with thousands of people, and he’s probably helped hundreds of people either get into the industry or, if they’re down on their luck, he’s helped them find a way back in.”
Shneyderov noted that despite Greene’s long tenure in the industry, the muni veteran has always managed to keep up with where the business is headed next.
“The main takeaway that I have from Tom is, you’ve got to adapt in order to stay relevant,” he said.
“And he’s managed to do that… Not only from a technology standpoint, but also from a networking standpoint,” Shneyderov said.
“I learned a long time ago that the one thing about our business is that it’s in constant change,” Greene said. “It reforms itself, and so I realized that change was to be looked at as an opportunity, not as something that you should be upset about.”
Still, he said personal relationships remain the cornerstone of the business, and “I worry about [the industry] contracting if it goes too much into AI and algos, and you get less individual stuff and more electronics.”
As he exits, Greene spoke in glowing terms of his many friends in the muni world, and Shneyderov and Fox said the admiration goes both ways. The latter both testified to a legacy built on relationships and bringing people together.
“He’s a hell of a trader. But if there’s anything he’s better at doing than trading, he’s a hell of a people person,” Shneyderov said.
“I’ve had a ball,” Greene said. “I feel so honored just to be a part of the industry because it’s treated me so well. I’m a small-town boy from Indiana who got involved in this business, and I have loved every minute of it.”