The Guernseys’ family planning

Not many families can boast a top financial executive in their ranks.

The Guernsey clan has two. Eve Guernsey, just named to the newly created position of CEO for J.P. Morgan Fleming’s institutional investment management business in the Americas, is married to Peter (Tony) Guernsey, president of Wilmington Trust Corp.'s New York banking subsidiary. The couple, who have a ten-year-old daughter, met 13 years ago when they both worked in J.P. Morgan’s private client group.

Eve, a career J.P. Morgan banker who has also worked in the firm’s mutual funds group, doesn’t hide her ambition to further expand the family purview. Her new job, which includes responsibility for 440 clients with a combined $120 billion in assets, is “a step along the way. I’m hoping to get an opportunity to run an even bigger part of this business,” she says.

Obviously, this isn’t the best of times to run a money management group. “Growth will come in slower increments than it has in the past,” she concedes. “Clients are doing full-blown asset-liability studies because the old studies were done with future rates of return that were inflated. The immediate goal is to get our arms around this and get through these rocky markets.” It helps to have an in-house counselor: “Tony’s been a great adviser on how to maneuver through a primarily male world.”

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