Stephen Winterstein joins MarketAxess

Bonds

Longtime municipal strategist Stephen Winterstein will leave the research side of the municipal and fixed income market to assume a newly-created role as municipal bond client sales and product manager at Market Axess, the firm confirmed.

Winterstein, most recently managing director of research and chief municipal fixed income strategist at Wilmington Trust Investment Advisors, Inc., will begin his new position at the New York-based electronic trading platform “in the coming weeks,” media spokesperson Kyle White told The Bond Buyer on Friday.

Stephen Winterstein

No further details on Winterstein’s official start date were available, White said.

With three decades of municipal fixed income portfolio management, trading, and research experience, Winterstein brings a wealth of buyside experience to Market Axess, the provider of a suite of credit products and technology solutions for a broad marketplace of over 1,400 institutional credit market clients.

Winterstein will support the firm’s efforts in building investor client sales opportunities and advising on product enhancements for municipal bond trading on the MarketAxess platform, according to White.

He will be joining the 18-year-old firm when the electronic trading platform is experiencing a rapid growth in municipal bond trading as the industry “begins to increasingly adopt electronic trading,” according to White.

In 2018, $5.9 billion worth of municipal debt traded on MarketAxess — which was a 47% increase compared to 2017, according to White.

With offices in London, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, São Paulo, Hong Kong and Singapore, the platform provides access, efficiencies, and transparency for dealers, as well as improvements in trade execution and portfolio level performance for investors.

The firm’s global market participants reach a broad group of counterparties, and offer trade execution technology for price discovery and increased market liquidity.

Its products for institutional credit markets seek to add efficiency and reduce transaction costs, helping clients navigate increasingly complex regulatory environments.

At Wilmington Trust, Winterstein was responsible for establishing the municipal bond portfolio management and research processes, as well as setting the municipal bond strategy for the firm’s institutional and individual clients.

Prior to joining Wilmington, he was managing director of municipal fixed income with PNC Capital Advisors, LLC in Philadelphia for more than 12 years, where he established and led a team of 15 municipal fixed income professionals dedicated to municipal bond management for high-net-worth individuals and institutional clients.

A well-regarded and highly recognized strategist for his influence in areas such as municipal bond indices, evaluations, performance attribution, and risk management, Winterstein is the 2016 recipient of the National Federation of Municipal Analysts Industry Contribution award.

In 2017, he was elected for a fourth time to the SMITH’s Research & Gradings Municipal All-Star Team in the municipal strategist category.

He is a member of the board of governors for the National Federation of Municipal Analysts, and a member of the advisory committee for the Brookings Institute’s Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy Annual Municipal Finance Conference.

Winterstein is a member of the board of directors for the Municipal Analysts Group of New York, and serves as the membership chair for that organization, as well as a member of the S&P Municipal Indices Working Group. He is co-chair of the technical advisory committee for Municipal Bonds for America, a non-partisan coalition of municipal bond issuers and State and local government officials in Washington, DC. He is also an Advisory Board Member of the Municipal Impact Coalition.

He is also an active member of the Investment Company Institute’s (“ICI”) municipal securities advisory committee. He is the President of the Philadelphia Area Municipal Analyst Society (“PhAMAS”) and a member of the board of governors of the Bond Club of Philadelphia.

Winterstein holds an masters of business administration from Lehigh University and a bachelor’s of arts degree in economics from Millersville University.

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