Mark P. Coville, a managing director in BlackRock's trading and liquidity strategy group whose outlook on life and work changed after a cancer diagnosis 23 months ago, has died. He was 58.
He died Dec. 10 at his home in New Hope, Pa., his wife, Lynda Coville, said in a telephone interview. The cause was acute myeloid leukemia.
Mr. Coville joined BlackRock when the firm acquired Merrill Lynch & Co.'s investment unit in 2006. He spent 25 years at Merrill, with a stint in London as head of securities lending. At BlackRock, he returned to London to head international sales for the cash management group. Most recently, Mr. Coville worked in New York, responsible for senior client relationships, and served on the Americas executive and cash management leadership committees.
“Mark Coville was a valued friend and colleague,” Tara McDonnell, a BlackRock spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. “His humor, intelligence and humanity will be dearly missed.”
The events that would upend his life began in November 2013. He was exhausted from a cough “that came not from my lungs but deep down in my stomach,” Mr. Coville said, according to a 2014 profile in Cancer Connection, a magazine published by Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, based in New Brunswick. “I had no energy and could hardly drive home from work.”
After seven doctor visits, a blood test on Jan. 13, 2014, confirmed he had leukemia. Following a bone marrow transplant, the executive returned to work a changed man.
“I am more emotional now and a different person after all this,” Mr. Coville said, according to the article. Previously, he had defined people by their jobs. “I no longer believe that,” he said. “There are other things in life more important.”
He received his bachelor's degree in finance in 1979 from the University of Connecticut in Storrs. The university's business school named him to its hall of fame in 2013.
After college, Mr. Coville worked briefly for Nasdaq before joining what was then Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith in 1982. He worked in London for the firm from 1995 to 1998, according to his wife. After returning to the U.S., Mr. Coville worked in the firm's asset management office in Princeton, N.J.
In addition to his wife and his sister Brenda Coville, survivors include the couple's children Candace and David.
