Source: https://www.london.edu/news/remembering-dr-mike-staunton

In Memory of Mike Staunton (1956-2026)

It is with great sadness that we learned of the sudden passing of our dear friend and colleague, Mike Staunton.
Mike was a constant presence in the international quantitative finance community. Whether at the Bachelier Congress, ICCF, or the many other meetings he regularly attended, he brought with him an extraordinary combination of curiosity, enthusiasm and friendliness. He genuinely enjoyed engaging with researchers, discussing new ideas and taking an interest in the work of others.
Mike also had a particular talent for communicating computational finance. For many years, he wrote regular columns for Wilmott, exploring new developments in numerical methods, offering his own perspective on their strengths and limitations, and illustrating them with snippets of code. It was very much Mike’s style: curious about new ideas, willing to put them to the test, and keen to make sophisticated methods accessible and useful to others.
His own research was closely tied to the London Share Price Database which he directed. It focused on long term asset returns, and mostly co-authored with two LBS professors, Elroy Dimson and Paul Marsh.
Finally, Mike had a long association with the quantitative finance community at Bayes Business School, going back to the early 2000s, when he contributed to the teaching of Numerical Methods on their quantitative finance programmes. Over the years, he remained a friend of the School and a familiar presence at the Financial Engineering Workshops, always interested in the work being presented and generous with his encouragement and support.
His sudden passing is particularly difficult to comprehend. Only two months ago, many of us met Mike at the Bachelier Congress in Bologna, where he was, as ever, engaged in long conversations about research, colleagues, life-and, inevitably, football.
Mike was an exceptionally friendly and hard-working colleague, a generous supporter of our community and, in the words of one of his long-standing friends, “in many ways a true English gentleman.” But those who knew him will remember just as strongly the person behind the professional colleague: his warmth and kindness, his infectious laughter and his unmistakable broad smile.
The quantitative finance community has lost one of its most familiar and generous members, and many of us have lost a dear friend. Our conferences and workshops will simply not feel quite the same without him.
Mike will be greatly missed.

Obituary by Laura Ballotta