Longtime investment banker George Joseph McLiney, Jr., passed away unexpectedly at age 87 Saturday. 

The founding father of McLiney and Company, which was acquired by SAMCO Capital Markets in 2019, McLiney was also a faithful husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather, an avid golfer and a successful Kansas cattleman.

George McLiney, Jr.

“He loved life, and that carried over to his business, to working together with his children and grandchildren,” said his son Eddie McLiney, senior managing director of public finance at McLiney and Co., now a division of SAMCO. “He believed in what he was doing. He saw that in doing the work that we do, we’re helping every community personally. We would like to do what’s best for them, if it really works out for the little town in Missouri or the West Virginia school district.”

After following his father into the municipal bond business with George K. Baum, McLiney founded McLiney and Co. in 1965.

He was an old style investment banker who believed firmly in logging the miles to indicate up for clients in person.

“We would like [clients] to know that if it takes extra work, so what. We’ll do it,” he told The Bond Buyer in 1991.

“You’ll be able to’t do it over the phone, you’ve to be there,” he said.

“We still show up in person,” Eddie McLiney told The Bond Buyer on Friday. “Occasionally there can be a Zoom call, but even during COVID, I used to be on an airplane regardless of what. To at the present time, my nephews are on the road putting miles on their automobile visiting the towns nose to nose. That is how he was raised, that is how I used to be raised, that is how they’re going to be raised.”

On Friday, Nov. 15, the senior McLiney was within the office. At 87 years old, he never stopped coming in to work.

“He would get entangled in every project,” Eddie McLiney said, though he noted George also gave his children and grandchildren room to shine. 

McLiney and Co. was a pioneer in the usage of qualified zone academy bonds, or QZABs, a tax-credit bond program that provided one other way for public schools with a significant slice of scholars from low-income families to boost funds.

McLiney said his father led the firm’s work on that front, taking off with all the allocations in Kansas and Missouri.

“He’s the one who really spent the time with the law and the regulations on the best way to make these items marketable,” he said, recalling how the firm ended up fielding a flurry of phone calls from senators’ aides asking them to assist lawmakers expand QZABs to other states. Eddie wound up flying out to Washington, D.C. to clarify how the firm was doing things.

“It just pleased him to no end that he was the one who figured it out first, and got us within the door,” Eddie McLiney said of his late father. Before long, “we were doing QZABs in 35 states,” he said.

“He adored this business,” said one other son, Joey McLiney, senior managing director at McLiney and Co. “He could drive across Missouri and Kansas and point to various things that we financed. It was pretty neat.”

Most of the senior McLiney’s five children and 19 grandchildren followed him into the business.

“He’s easy to follow,” Joey McLiney said.

“His entire philosophy was just, ‘Do the fitting thing.’ Most individuals don’t need to work for a community of under 2,000 people… But when not us, who? It’s those communities that we have all the time worked with, those which can be on the market within the country. It takes quite a bit more time, quite a bit more hand-holding,” he said.

“He all the time considered it a privilege,” Joey McLiney said.

“I saw the enjoyment he took in it,” Eddie McLiney said. “The grandchildren saw it… In case you treat your customers right, you do what’s best for them, you can be handsomely rewarded. But it surely is all concerning the customer. And that was all the time his motto.”

Joey McLiney noted that his father “never underwrote a bond that is defaulted, and to this point we’re running an ideal track record.”

Still, “if he desired to be known for something, he would wish to be referred to as a Catholic,” Joey McLiney said. “He loved discussing his faith. It was never separated [from his work] — the 2 went hand in hand.” 

George McLiney, Jr. is survived by his wife of 63 years, Laurie McCaskill McLiney, his five children, 19 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

He attended Mass every day, and Joey McLiney believes his father’s peaceful if sudden exit is the best way he would have desired to depart this world. 

“It was the proper solution to go,” Joey McLiney said. “He was still golfing… He was at work Friday. And we were laughing. We were all the time laughing.”