(Bloomberg) — Ken Swain, a partner and institutional sales trader at BTIG LLC who brought passion and a quarter century of experience to his job running the firms Red Bank, New Jersey, office, has died. He was 51.
He died Sunday in Rumson, New Jersey, where he lived, after suffering a heart attack, Steven Starker, co-founder of the company, said Monday in a telephone interview.
Swain also was a managing director at BTIG, with headquarters in New York and San Francisco, and was primarily responsible for hedge fund and mutual fund clients seeking equity trading services. He joined the financial servicesfirmin 2007, five years after its founding, and emerged as a larger than life figure at the company for his obsession with his work, Starker said. The 6-foot-3 Swain kept an inversion table in the office and, wearing a telephone headset, would sometimes execute trades while hanging upside down.
He wore his headset throughout the day, staying tethered to the trading desk and clients even while visiting the lavatory or running out to the street to add money to his cars parking meter.
He never wanted to be off the desk, Starker said. He had a saying that he had no time for friends. But his clients were his friends and his friends were his clients.
Prior to BTIG, Swain had worked since 1997 at New York-based Jefferies & Co., where he was a senior vice president and sales trader in the equity division, according to Traders Magazine. From 1994 to 1997, he was a sales trader at Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. in Manhattan, and from 1991 to 1994 held a similar position at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in New York.
Kenneth Robert Swain Jr. was born Feb. 4, 1965, in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. His father was director of public safety for the town from 1982 to 1987, according to the cityswebsite. The son graduated from Glen Ridge High School in 1983 and received a bachelors degree from Radford College in Virginia in 1987.
His survivors include his wife, the former Kimberly Messina, and seven children, Megan, Thomas, Kenneth III, John, Julia, Paige and Colin. The couple had recently celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary, Starker said.
