When affluent people speak, James Hillman is there to listen. As a regional managing director with BNY Mellon Wealth Management, Hillman oversees a team of 41 portfolio managers. Hillman came to a finance career later in life after serving in the U.S. Army and attending Boston College Law School. By the time he graduated, his interest in business outweighed his interest in the law. He worked at TD Banknorth and joined BNY Mellon in 2000. Interestingly, Hillman now sees other lawyers becoming wealth management advisors. “I just recently hired an associate from a major law firm in Southern California,” Hillman said. “He’s working for me as a portfolio manager, focused more on the fiduciary trust side of the business.” He believes the next 10 years will be some of the most challenging for investors and the economy. It’s why a good portfolio manager is critical. Hillman is a recent transplant from New England, having moved to Calabasas with his wife and three children, all of whom play either baseball or softball. Those on-field connections have proven helpful in building new business. He calls it the baseball dad network. Question: What’s the climate in wealth management? Answer: Clients are looking for more advice and turning more to professionals to navigate through these challenging times. We view it as an opportunity. People who have tried to do it themselves before are saying ‘I’m not sure I can do that.’ Q: As the managing director of portfolio management, what is your role? A: I oversee for Southern California all of the portfolio management and client services for three different offices. We split our sales and service so we have dedicated business development officers and dedicated portfolio management and client services people. My role is to oversee that group who are actually delivering the day-to-day services for our well over a thousand client relationships that we have here in Southern California. I think our percentage base over the last twelve months, in terms of assets, has increased roughly about 25 percent. Title: Regional Managing Director, portfolio management with BNY Mellon Wealth Management Education: B.S., from West Point; law degree from Boston College Law School Personal: Married with two sons, one daughter Q: Were you at one time a portfolio manager? A: I was. I’ve been with the company eleven years. Nine of those years I was in our home office for wealth management in Boston and I started as a portfolio manager, managing client relationships. After about four years, I was promoted to a leadership position as a team leader where I did manage portfolios and relationships as well as lead a group of thirteen professionals. I did that for five years. Then I had the opportunity to come to Southern California to manage a group. I’ve been in Southern California for two years. Our total presence out here is 80. Dedicated service professionals are 41. Q: What lessons did you learn when you were a portfolio manager? A: The most interesting times and experiences that I’ve been a part of over the last 18 years is seeing the market in economic extremes. Starting in this business in the early to mid ‘90s I’ve seen the run up with technology. Seeing that technology bubble burst, experiencing significant market downturn on top of that. External events of 9/11 and how that impacted the economic investor psychology. Also going through the more recent highs and lows with the financial crisis. What that does is it just gives you the background, the experience to be able to coach others, both at the senior level as well as the more junior level, on how to approach some of these situations. (It also helps) to appropriately set expectations on how their portfolios will perform over time. Also, setting expectations on how many risks do we really want to take within those particular assets. We work with clients that really have made money…and don’t want to lose it. Q: Having started your career on the East Coast in New England and then moving to Southern California, what are some differences in investment strategies and clients? A: What’s interesting is how the wealth that has developed in Southern California is different than New England. A lot of money has been made through real estate development. A lot of money has been made through aerospace and manufacturing. There’s the entertainment business. There’s a different perspective that we have to tailor in how we manage the portfolio and how we articulate the process to best relate to them the value and benefit of our process. Q: Are there any types of investments you see people in Southern California do more of? A: We have a lot of interest in the alternative space in Southern California. The traditional is the equities, fixed income, stocks and bonds. In alternatives, the approach is one of looking for total return. I find a lot of interest in that sort of entrepreneurial way of preserving and growing wealth. (There is) a real true entrepreneurial spirit here that is very strong. Q: You served in the military. Has anything about that experience translated into your business career? A: (There are) two things that I got out of my military experience that have been beneficial in business. One is the need to persevere. The second is leadership. People have a perception that military leadership and corporate leadership are vastly different. It’s different, but it’s not vastly different. In both cases, people need buy-in with respect to an initiative or a directive. They need to understand ‘Why does that make sense?’ and ‘Why is that important?’ Q: You also have a law degree. Did you ever practice? A: I worked as an associate for a little more than a year. I also worked in law firms while I was in law school. It was a good experience. A legal education is a wonderful education. Being a trust company, there are tax issues, fiduciary issues that we need to address. My law degree has been incredibly helpful with respect to that. Even just assessing business risks and understanding what liability is and what negligence is. Q: You mentioned that more people are seeking wealth management. Do you expect to see that continue as the economy remains shaky? A: We view the next 10 years to be some of the most challenging that we’re going to see, particularly in the investment environment and the economy. Most people make decisions emotionally, particularly on the investment side. Unfortunately, most people make the wrong decisions at the wrong time. What people are looking for is the discipline. It takes a client a year to understand how things work. An investor cannot assess how good an investment manager is without going through a full market cycle and that’s generally three to five years. Those clients who have gone through a full market cycle are our most satisfied, particularly the ones who have gone through significant downturns. Q: Do you think the public’s negative perception of wealthy people is unfair? A: Much of the wealth of this country, (and) much of the employment of this country is driven by people that have worked hard and created a business. They provide many people with good salaries, benefits and so forth. I think the vast majority of successful people are unfairly tagged as taking advantage of the system. Q:Is the wealth management division hiring? A: Absolutely. Southern California is viewed as one of our top growth markets for BNY Mellon Wealth Management. Even though the market is down (and) some of our competitors and other firms may be cutting jobs, we continue to hire. We are prudent about how we hire. We don’t hire a slew of people all at once. But we’ve been adding staff on a very consistent basis for the last several years. Q: How do you like living in Calabasas? A: I love it. I had never heard of the town before coming to Southern California. I had the advantage of being out here for eight months prior to my family coming out here. As I got out here and was exploring, different people I talked to said “You need to check out Calabasas.” One weekend I drove out and I thought this was exactly what we were looking for in terms of the community, neighborhoods. We have developed a number of friends in the community relatively quickly. All my kids play sports. My two oldest (sons) play baseball. My daughter plays softball. Q: Have you gotten any clients out of attending games? A: I’ve developed business relationships with a number of folks, and we’ve gotten several referrals out of that, both on the mortgage side as well as the investment management. I call it the baseball dad network.
Wealth of Wisdom
