Professor’s leadership helped quell stock crashes

Robert R. Glauber, a Harvard University business school professor whose leadership on a presidential commission after the 1987 stock market meltdown led to new rules to temporarily halt trading as a way to prevent extreme drops in the financial markets, died Feb. 14 at his home in Brookline, Mass. He was 81.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, said his wife, Barbara Winter “Muffy” Glauber.

Glauber, an expert in corporate finance and investment banking, was selected by former Sen. Nicholas Brady, R-N.J., a prominent Wall Street securities executive, to serve as executive director of a commission created to determine the cause of the Oct. 19, 1987, market breakdown, known as Black Monday, and to propose steps to prevent similar crashes from happening in the future.

The task force, chaired by Brady and popularly known as the Brady Commission, set up shop in Manhattan in late 1987 and was given just 60 days to investigate the stock market free fall — when the Dow Jones industrial average dropped a historic 508 points, or 22.6%, in a single day of trading — and to report its findings to help restore confidence in the stability of the markets.