Bessemer hires business developer for New England

FWR Staff

15 January 2008

Ultra-high-net worth advisory staffs up to support growth in Boston office. Multifamily office Bessemer Trust has hired former Fidelity executive Pamela Murray to lead its business-development efforts in New England.

"Pam understands the value that an independent wealth manager like Bessemer can deliver to clients, especially in recent years when so many wealth managers have diluted their client focus due to consolidation and a loss of independence," says Bessemer's Senior Managing Director Robert Elliott.

Murray spent 16 years at Boston-based Fidelity, where she filled senior slots in brokerage and capital-markets services. Before that she was in wealth management at Dean Witter for 7 years. Now she reports to Stephen Kistner, head of Bessemer's Boston office.

Blast furnace

The principal challenge facing wealth managers in New England is de-coupling product from advice, says Kister. "Prominent New England families desire a sophisticated, long-term approach to their current and legacy wealth needs, and are averse to providers whose underlying goal is to cross-sell financial products."

Bessemer's office in Boston is brand new. Kister, who used to work at U.S. Trust, opened it late last year.

New York-based Bessemer was founded in 1907 as the Henry Phipps family office. Phipps was the largest shareholder in the Carnegie Steel Company after Andrew Carnegie.

Now a multifamily wealth management and investment advisory firm, Bessemer oversees about $50 billion for approximately 1,800 "relationships" -- that is, wealthy families, individuals and in some cases their associated institutions.

"Bessemer" refers to Sir Henry Bessemer, an English engineer who in the 1850s developed a method for making steel by blasting compressed air through molten iron to burn out excess carbon and impurities. Phipps and Bessemer never met. -FWR

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