Former Smith Barney exec, Peter McCrae Ramsey, 82, dies

Peter McCrae Ramsey, 82, a former public finance executive who spent more than 30 years as a banker in the municipal bond industry and was considered a mentor to many, died June 8 in Annapolis, Md. 

His extensive career in public finance largely consisted of structuring municipal bond financings that funded the expansion of airports, healthcare centers and other institutions.

Born in Philadelphia in 1941, Ramsey was the son of Russell and Elfreda Winant Ramsey. He grew up in Winter Park, Fla.

He spent his early career in the trust department of Virginia National Bank before earning an MBA from Wharton School in Philadelphia.

Ramsey then joined the public finance department of the former Smith Barney in Philadelphia in early 1970 and began a lifelong career in public finance banking that included many prestigious and intricate structures, according to his former colleagues.

They said they were fortunate to have worked with someone they considered a mentor.

When Ramsey was hired in the mid-1980s to head up a new public finance department at U.S. regional bank Sovran Bank in Richmond, Va., he trained Lynn Ivey, who was then a senior vice president in the public finance department.

He arrived from Smith Barney with a distinguished career in airport finance, Ivey noted.

“He was quite proud of his history with the Orlando Airport,” he said, pointing out that with Ramsey’s credentials, Sovran Investment Corp., known as SIC, participated in numerous Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority financings for Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport as a managing underwriter.

He also led the department in many state housing authority financings across the country, often inspired by the innovative financier and SIC founder, J. Hamilton Scherer, Ivey added.

“Peter built the public finance department over 10 years, distinguishing it in the housing, airport, and healthcare industries,” he recalled. “He was a true gentleman who enjoyed good cigars and a good laugh,” said Ivey, who left SIC in 1990 and is currently executive director of The Trustees of the Funds, a small investment company affiliated with the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia.

William R. Derry, Jr., a former partner at Richmond-based law firm Mays & Valentine, which merged with Atlanta-based Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders LLC, met Ramsey when he joined the municipal finance department at Sovran, which operated in Virginia in the mid-1980s.

“It was a time when the barriers between commercial and investment banking set forth in the Glass-Steagall Act were coming down, and Peter headed a team that closed many innovative financings,” Derry recalled.

Ramsey worked on variable and fixed-rate bond issues supported by bank liquidity facilities and letters of credit and the securitizing of long-term, fixed-rate bonds into a fixed- and variable-rate component, he said.

“I had the good fortune to serve as both underwriter counsel and bank counsel for Peter on a significant number of these issues while Sovran became NationsBank, and then Bank of America through mergers, until his retirement around 2003,” Derry said.

“I traveled with him all over the country and saw firsthand what a truly nice honest, and loyal person he was to his clients and colleagues,” Derry continued. “He was an absolute man of his word and always made me feel as if I were a trusted advisor, for which I will always be grateful.”

Others said he was a true role model.

“I recall that Peter was the consummate gentleman: kind, ethical and authentic,” Robert Feigenson, executive director in the fixed income division at Morgan Stanley, who worked with Ramsey in the public finance department at Bank of America in Washington, D.C. in 2003 until he retired in 2005.

“His kindness and grace left a lasting impression,” Feigenson said.

Besides his professional career, he cherished his family most — especially his wife of 60 years May Frances, whom he met in 1963 at an orientation meeting for the University of North Carolina students planning a summer abroad. 

They were married a year later and raised three children in Devon, Pa. 

The couple later moved to Richmond and Arlington when Ramsey headed public finance departments during the banking industry consolidation of the 1980s and 1990s. 

Retiring from public finance in 2005, Ramsey moved to Edgewater, Md. 

As an avid traveler, he and his wife spent his retirement traveling extensively to destinations as far as Morocco, China, Vietnam, Myanmar, Israel, India, South America and South Africa.

He also loved antiques and boating on the Chesapeake Bay.

Ramsey is survived by his wife; son Crae and wife Traci of Annapolis; son Russell and wife Serena of Novato, Calif.; daughter Sarah of New York; grandchildren Cameron and Margot of Annapolis; sister, Cynthia Price of Bethesda, Md.; and sister Pamela McKean of San Francisco, Ca.