James Maguire, who won praise from Warren Buffett for efficiently matching buyers and sellers of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. shares as the company’s New York Stock Exchange floor specialist, has died. He was 86.
He died on Aug. 21 at his home in Short Hills, New Jersey, according to a death notice by Bradley Smith & Smith Funeral Home in Springfield, New Jersey. No cause was given.
As chairman of Henderson Brothers Inc., the market-maker assigned to Berkshire when it began selling shares on the NYSE in 1988, Maguire personally handled trading in the company’s stock. Buffett, famously protective of his shareholders, gave Maguire his seal of approval.
“With more than a year behind him of trading Berkshire’s stock on the New York Stock Exchange,” Buffett wrote in a 1989 letter to shareholders, Maguire “continues his outstanding performance. Before we listed, dealer spreads often were 3 percent or more of market price. Jim has maintained the spread at 50 points or less, which at current prices is well under 1 percent. Shareholders who buy or sell benefit significantly from this reduction in transaction costs.”
Buffett added, “Because we are delighted by our experience with Jim, HBI and the NYSE, I said as much in ads that have been run in a series placed by the NYSE. Normally I shun testimonials, but I was pleased in this instance to publicly compliment the exchange.” Buffett reiterated his praise in his 1993 letter to shareholders.
The feeling was mutual. In a 2009 interview, Maguire, who commuted from New Jersey by train or ferry long after he could afford to hire a driver, said of Buffett, one of the wealthiest individuals in the world: “He’s just one of us, believe me. I met a guy who puts his pants on the same way I do — just a guy.”
The trading of Berkshire shares carries a special cachet, apart from the connection to Buffett. That’s because a single class A share, which carries full voting rights and has never seen a stock split, can be bought today for the princely sum of about $268,500.
In an appearance on CNBC in 2007, Maguire was asked about the story behind a photograph at his trading post showing him whispering in Buffett’s ear. “I said, Warren, why don’t you split your stock, for goodness sake?” Maguire recalled. “He thought about it a minute and he said, ‘No!’”
When Berkshire issued its more restrictive, and cheaper, class B shares in 1996, Maguire faced one of his biggest challenges. One A share was supposed to always be worth 30 B shares. Faced with massive trading on the first day, Maguire let a 4 percent gap open between the pricing of the A and B shares, he told the Wall Street Journal for a 2005 profile.
“We just traded blindly” for the first few days, until he prepared a conversion table to follow, he said.
The holder of a seat on the stock exchange since 1972, Maguire was known on the floor as “chief.” The stocks he oversaw included the Washington Post Co., according to a 2005 article in the New York Times. In 1999, he sold Henderson Brothers to LaBranche & Co. for a reported $230 million and became managing partner of the new firm. LaBranche was acquired by New York-based Cowen Group Inc. in June 2011.
Maguire rang the closing bell on Sept. 4, 2009, to mark the start of his 61st year on Wall Street.
Among his other ceremonial roles, he helped host President Ronald Reagan’s 1985 visit to the stock exchange — the first by a sitting president — as well as a return visit in 1992, when Reagan was ex-president and was accompanied by Mikhail Gorbachev, former head of the Soviet Union, which had disintegrated the previous year.
In an interview upon Reagan’s death in 2004, Maguire recalled a light moment involving the two leaders on the day of their joint visit.
“President Reagan, in his inimitable sense of timing, reached into his pocket, fumbled around and said, ‘I have something here for you,’” Maguire said. “He came up with a crumpled note. He said, ‘It’s a letter from Nancy to Raisa,’” referring to their wives. “President Gorbachev took in it into his hands and said, ‘Fancy mailman.’”
James J. Maguire was born Oct. 13, 1930, in South Orange, New Jersey, the middle child of nine. He spent much of his teenage years on the Jersey Shore, in the town of Monmouth Beach.
In 1949, fresh out of high school, he began work on Wall Street keeping track of prices as a board boy at a bond-trading firm. After serving in the military during the Korean War, he worked as a specialist at the American Stock Exchange. In 1972, as a partner in the firm Dyer Maguire Dritz & Co., he won election as vice chairman of the exchange’s governing board.
Just months later he left the Amex to become a partner at Henderson Brothers, a leading NYSE specialist firm that handled trading in Ford and Bausch and Lomb, among other stocks.
Maguire said Buffett first called him soon after the market crash of 1987, when the Berkshire chairman was seeking more prospective buyers for his stock, which then traded over the counter. They became friends as well as business associates, speaking about once a month, he said.
Survivors include his wife of 56 years, Diane; six children, James Maguire Jr., Liz Mead, Michael Maguire, Regina Fernicola, Paul Maguire and Mary Grubert; three sisters and two brothers; and 22 grandchildren.
The New York Stock Exchange paid tribute to Maguire on a giant video board following his death. In a statement sent to CNBC’s Bob Pisani, Buffett recalled searching for the right specialist to handle his company’s trading, and “it was obvious that the choice should be Jimmy. We immediately became the best of friends and I labeled him the ‘World’s Greatest Specialist.’ He also was the world’s greatest guy.”
Bloomberg writer Michael D Robbins contributed to this report.