NEW YORK CITY-Wm. Polk Carey, founder and chairman of W.P. Carey & Co. LLC, the New York City-based investment management firm, has died. According to a company statement, Carey passed away earlier today in West Palm Beach, FL. He was 81 years old.

Carey founded the firm that bears his name in 1973, primarily to structure single-asset private transactions, which he knew well from his days as chairman of the executive committee of Hubbard, Westervelt & Mottelay. He was also head of Real Estate and Equipment Financing at Loeb, Rhoades & Co., a Wall Street brokerage founded in 1931 and acquired by American Express in 1981.

His mark will be left in numerous ways, beyond the W.P. Carey & Co. brand. Perhaps chief among his philanthropic endeavors is the W.P. Carey Foundation, established in 1988 and of which he was chairman. The foundation’s motto is “doing good while doing well,” which Carey said meant “that when we are financing properties for companies we are also helping the communities those companies serve.”

The foundation endowed the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University in January 2003. And in 2007, a $50 million gift from Carey established the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. Carey was a trustee emeritus at the university, which was located in his hometown.

Trevor Bond, W.P. Carey & Co.’s CEO, said that he “was more than our founder and chairman—he was the cultural leader of our company,” and added that the best way to honor his memory is to “continue to deliver outstanding results to investors” and “to ensure that the standards of excellence he established at W.P. Carey & Co. remain intact.”