Harvard Business, School Professor William L. White, an expert on corporate financing decisions and author of leading textbooks on banking, died Monday of leukemia. He war 47.

Over the last two years, White had served as the senior member of the faculty group teaching the school's first-year course on financing. He was also well-known for developing the course "Capital Markets," which deals with the impact of financial markets on business decision-making. White taught the course from 1966 to 1983.

Professor Robert R. Glauber, who chairs the finance department at the Business School, called White "a teacher in the true sense of the word."

Glauber said that despite White's MIT background, "where there is a greater emphasis on scholarship than on teaching." White went on to become "a devoted teacher" of younger faculty.

Professor William A. Sahlman, a junior member of the faculty group that' teaches the first-year financing course, said that White had "helped .