Michael Murray
Partner
michael.murray@ricefin.com

Michael Murray is a Partner at Rice Financial and Chief Executive Officer of the firm’s Broker/Dealer Division.  As the firm’s most senior partner, he is an integral part of all facets of Rice Financial’s three target businesses: municipal bond underwriting, taxable fixed income investment and municipal derivatives.

Mr. Murray oversees the Quantitative Finance Group at Rice Financial and is personally involved in the structuring of each bond financing senior managed by the firm.  The most notable of these includes a $114 million bond transaction for the Jackson Public School District in Mississippi, which received the Bond Buyer’s Southeast Region Deal of the Year award in 2008 and was the largest school district bond financing ever completed in the state of Mississippi.  Mr. Murray was also intimately involved in a $124 million combined utility transaction the firm senior managed for the City of Houston in 2007 as well as numerous other senior managed financings for the states of Mississippi and Ohio; the cities of Chicago, Cincinnati and Inglewood (CA); Fulton County (GA); City Colleges of Chicago; Morehouse College (GA); Houston METRO; and the Atlanta and Fulton County Recreation Authority.   Since its founding in 1993, Rice Financial has served as a managing underwriter on municipal bond transactions totaling more than $270 billion. 

Before joining Rice Financial, Mr. Murray led the Financial Engineering Group of Merrill Lynch’s Municipal Markets Division.  His responsibilities included reviewing all major quantitative analyses, training new professionals and developing standard numerical models for the department’s structuring of complex refinancing and new money issues.  While at Merrill Lynch, he personally structured several billion dollars of the firm’s senior managed tax-exempt debt issues, including a $1.1 billion New Jersey State Authority financing, the largest tax-exempt advance refunding ever done up to that time.  Michael left Merrill in the mid-1990s to join his former colleague, Don Rice, at Rice Financial.

Mr. Murray is a graduate of Howard University where he earned a bachelor’s degree in computer systems engineering.

Back to Our Team Section