William Curtis Livingston III, the CEO who led Western Asset Management Co. during its purchase by Legg Mason and then oversaw a fourteenfold surge of invested client money, has died. He was 71.
He died on Tuesday at his home in New York, his son, William Livingston IV, said Thursday in a telephone interview. The cause was pancreatic cancer. He also lived in Nantucket, Mass.
In 1983, he became president and CEO of Los Angeles-based WAMCO, a manager of institutional fixed-income investments, then a division of First Interstate Bank. Three years later, Mr. Livingston oversaw the sale of the unit to Baltimore-based Legg Mason Inc. WAMCO then managed $3.5 billion.
In 1996, Mr. Livingston’s division bought London-based Lehman Brothers Global Asset Management, renaming it Western Asset Global Management and using it as a toehold in Europe.
By the time Mr. Livingston retired in 1999, WAMCO oversaw $50 billion in assets.
Now, WAMCO manages $471.6 billion and is the largest investment division at Legg Mason, one of the largest U.S. money managers.
Mr. Livingston graduated from Duke University, Durham, N.C., and earned an MBA at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business in Hanover, N.H.
Later, he managed fixed-income portfolios at the Ford Foundation and at money manager Fischer Francis Trees & Watts, both based in New York, and Fidelity Investment Management Services in Boston.
In 1981, Mr. Livingston joined WAMCO as senior vice president and director of fixed-income management.
He helped several not-for-profit organizations with financial management, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Nantucket Atheneum, a public library.
Mr. Livingston’s survivors also include a daughter, Molly L. Paiement; four grandchildren; and a sister, Ann Wainscott. His wife of 40 years, the former Pamela Sullivan, died in 2010.
