Patricia Dunn, who helped lead Barclays Global Investors push into the ETF market in the 1990s has died, reports MarketWatch.

The 58-year-old Dunn died on Sunday and had been suffering from cancer, the news service reported.

Dunn told MarketWatch reporter Jonathan Burton in the late 1990s that she was cautiously optimistic about the then new ETF product but that she and her team did not know what to expect. She said her team did think that ETFs are a "better mousetrap."

At the time Barclays offered WEBS (an abbreviation of World Equity Benchmark Shares). WEBS rebranded as iShares in 2000.

Despite her role in pushing ETFs, Dunn is more broadly known for her time as chairman of Hewlett-Packard Co. and her role in the boardroom espionage scandal that cost her that post.

Dunn rose to prominence at Barclays after joining Wells Fargo Investment Advisors as a part-time secretary. Wells Fargo launched the first index products in the early 1970s for institutional investors. She was running Wells Fargo Investment Advisors by the time Barclays purchased the business in 1995.

It was those roots in both the institutional market and in indexing that provided fertile ground for the iShares business.

She resigned as BGI's CEO in 2002 citing ill-health. 

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