W. Curtis Livingston, former leader of Legg Mason unit, dies at 71

W. Curtis Livingston III, the chief executive officer who led Western Asset Management Co. during its purchase by Legg Mason Inc. and then oversaw a 14-fold surge of invested client money, has died. He was 71.

He died on Dec. 2 at his home in New York, his son, William Livingston IV, said yesterday in a telephone interview. The cause was pancreatic cancer. He also lived in Nantucket, Mass.

Mr. Livingston, who spent more than three decades in the investing industry, described himself as “a bond person through and through,” according to a 1999 interview with Global Investor magazine.

In 1983, he became president and CEO of Los Angeles-based Western, a manager of institutional fixed-income investments, then a division of First Interstate Bank Ltd. Three years later, Mr. Livingston oversaw the sale of the unit to Baltimore-based Legg Mason Inc. (LM) for more than $18 million, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time. Western then managed $3.5 billion.

Within four years of the purchase, the unit was contributing 40% of Legg Mason’s total fee revenue of $35 million, Financial World magazine reported in 1990.

“The real key at Western has been to leave them alone,” Legg Mason CEO Raymond Mason said, according to Financial World. “They know what they are doing and we ought to let them run their business.”

AT&T, IBM

Western’s clients included American Telephone & Telegraph Co., International Business Machines Corp. and the Rockefeller Foundation, according to Global Investor.

In 1996, Mr. Livingston’s division bought London-based Lehman Brothers Global Asset Management Ltd., renaming it Western Asset Global Management and using it as a toehold in Europe.

“Our motto from the beginning has been that we are one company with two offices, not two different companies,” Mr. Livingston said, according to Global Investor.

By the time he retired in 1999, Western oversaw $50 billion in assets.

Today, Pasadena, Calif.-based Western manages $471.6 billion and is the largest investment division at Legg Mason, one the biggest U.S. money management companies.

William Curtis Livingston III was born on June 17, 1943, in Indiana, according to his son. He grew up in Frankfort, Ky., where his father, William C. Livingston Jr., was an architect and his mother, the former Genevieve Montgomery, a librarian.

DUKE, DARTMOUTH

Mr. Livingston graduated from Duke University in 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 Inc., both based in New York, and Fidelity Investment Management Services in Boston.

In 1981, Mr. Livingston joined Western 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 had a large stamp collection, specializing in proposed designs and proofs, and served on the council of philatelists at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, where items from his collection have been displayed.

An avid traveler, he visited 80 countries and every continent, his son said.

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.