Kathleen Moriarty Obituary, Death – Kathleen Moriarty passed away on Tuesday. She was one of the industry’s first female pioneers, contributing to the creation of the first exchange-traded fund in the US thirty years ago. The law firm Chapman and Cutler, where she was a senior counsel in the New York office at the time of her demise, confirmed her passing. The “SPDR Woman” was her more popular moniker.
The details of Moriarty’s age and death circumstances were not immediately accessible. She went unexpectedly after “a brief illness,” according to Reggie Browne, principal of GTS Securities in New York, who spoke with ETF.com. Moriarty was hired to help with the creation of an investment instrument that was traded on exchanges similar to a stock and was modeled after a mutual fund. State Street Corp. launched this specific product, the SPDR S&P 500 Trust (SPY), to the market in 1993.
With $368 billion in assets, it is now the exchange-traded fund (ETF) with the largest asset base worldwide. Numerous articles on ETF.com had Moriarty as a highlighted subject, and the website also listed him as one of its “Legends of Indexing.” In a recent audio interview with Heather Bell, managing editor of ETF.com, Moriarty talked about her experiences as one of the few women working in the fledgling ETF industry. She thought back on her encounters.
She described working on various pioneering funds of their sort, including as the INDEXIQ, gold, and precious metals funds, as a “fortune” for which she was grateful. Moriarty also supports a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). She says that women’s advancement in the ETF industry has been patchy and that there is still much need for improvement in this area.
There are “minor [changes], but I don’t think they are significant,” according to Moriarty. In 1975, Chapman attended Smith College for her undergraduate studies before attending Notre Dame Law School for her legal education, according to her biography. She graduated from law school in 1980. Moriarty served as a director for Women in ETFs, the New York Bar Association’s Investment Management Regulation Committee,
and the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies, and Investment Management, among other boards. Moriarty also participated in the Task Force on Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies, and Investment Management of the American Bar Association. She received the Nate Most Award in 2017 for being the “Greatest Contributor to the ETF Marketplace.” This prize, which carries his name, is given in recognition of the ETF’s inventor.
The Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust, the first attempt to register a bitcoin ETF in the United States by a U.S. applicant, was developed with the help of Moriarty. Moriarty contributed to the construction of the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust in addition to the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD). According to Browne, the industry “just wouldn’t be the same” without her. “As a result of this occurrence, both her family and the profession have suffered a huge loss.”