Marketer of the Year
Meskiewicz, the only public fund and Taft-Hartley marketer in Hartford’s Institutional Solutions Group, helped the group bring in $2 billion in equity assets last year, taking its equity business to $20 billion. He has also assisted in the growth of its hedge fund assets to almost $900 million from $690 million.
Throughout his career, Meskiewicz has built relationships with pension plan executives and cios who see him as a trusted advisor and source of information. “He’s always been very helpful with his time and knowledge,” said Dan Owens, executive director of the Holyoke (Mass.) Retirement System, who has known Meskiewicz for 10 years. Meskiewicz has helped Owens teach his trustees about absolute return hedge funds, a strategy the fund is considering investing in. Meskiewicz is skilled at talking to trustees from all walks of life and giving a “hedge fund 101,” Owens continued.
Tim Barrett, executive director of the San Bernardino County Employees Retirement Association, said there’s a difference between marketers who know their product well and those who, like Meskiewicz, understand the entire industry. Meskiewicz knows a lot of managers and will recommend a different firm if his employer doesn’t offer the right strategy. As he was putting together a recently-issued RFP for credit managers, Barrett had a couple of in-depth calls with Meskiewicz, discussing how to structure the RFP and where the pitfalls are in different fixed-income strategies. “It’s almost as if he has a consulting background,” Barrett noted. San Bernardino has included Hartford in a couple of searches, but hasn’t yet hired the firm. For Meskiewicz, “it’s about the relationship, not the sales call,” Barrett said.
Meskiewicz also has the admiration of his competitors, one of whom described him as a key reason people do business with Hartford. He called Meskiewicz “a good, sound, very memorable marketer.”
Meskiewicz has 16 years of institutional sales experience, including four with Hartford and six at The Bank of New York.