Hedge Fund Rising Stars: Neil Messing

The ongoing tremors in financial services have made top money management talent more willing and available to work in the public pension fund sector. Consider Neil Messing, who after graduating from the University of Arizona with a finance degree moved to ­Chicago to take a job as a financial analyst with IBM Corp.’s pension fund. In 2001 he landed a job as an analyst with fund-of-hedge-funds firm Glenwood Capital ­Investments. Five years later he left to work for the New Jersey hedge fund office of Swiss asset management company Unigestion as deputy to ­Sandra D’Italia, a former managing director at ­Goldman, Sachs & Co. When Unigestion decided at the end of 2009 to conduct hedge fund research exclusively from Europe, Messing, now 39, was snapped up by the Bureau of Asset Management in New York to help oversee the $125 billion city pension system’s new hedge fund allocation.