As managing director of Thornburg Investment Management's Institutional Group, Pete Trevisani has about 100 clients, each f them with average assets of $140 million.

That, of course, is serious money being invested in the money markets at a time when uncertainty still rules and memories of last year's collapse of both stock and bond prices causes shudders to run down an investor's spine.

Thornburg Institutional Group's clients include a wide range of companies and nonprofits, ranging from labor unions in New York City to private companies such as ThyssenKrupp to a small foundation in Taos.

Thornburg's Institutional Group also manages institutional funds overseas for residents of the United Kingdom and Europe. There is interest in the Middle East, Asia and Australia in investing with Thornburg, Trevisani said.

The competition among money management firms is tough, but with 10 years running the Institutional Group, "I know who (my customers) are and what their expectations are," Trevisani said. "And I'm happy to fulfill their needs."

He added: 'It's a challenge to create great performance and offer these things that allow us to stand out."

One of those advantages is the city of Santa Fe, Trevisani said.

Many clients find a need to visit Santa Fe in the course of doing business with the Institutional Group and enjoy the fact that the city is so small and welcoming, far from the turmoil of Wall Street.

In addition, Santa Fe attracts "top talent" of young people for companies like Thornburg, Trevisani said. That means Thornburg can not only pick the best applicants for its job openings but retain them.

"I would put our team up against any team on Wall Street," said Trevisani, who used to work at Lehman Brothers, one of the pillars of New York's financial district until it went bankrupt as a result of the credit crunch last year.

Another reason clients come to visit Santa Fe is to take in the colorful, new, 100,000-square-foot Thornburg Campus, which according to a company booklet consists of three interconnected sections that are "steps down along the sloping Sangre de Cristo mountains."

The architects of the building, which opened earlier this year, were Legoretta and Legoretta with Dekker/Perich/Sabatini.

An additional competitive advantage the Institutional Group enjoys is that it has six Thornburg equity funds in which it can invest clients' funds. They are the Value Fund, International Value Fund, Core Growth Fund, Investment Income Builder, Global Opportunities and International Growth.

Leading the pack as of Sept. 4 was the Core Growth Fund, up 33.81 percent, followed by the Value Fund, up 32.98 percent.

"The overwhelming number of our clients invest in Thornburg mutual funds, especially the International Value Fund, which has about $30 billion in assets," Trevisani said. The International Value Fund was up 21.03 percent as of Sept. 4.

Wendy Trevisani, Pete Trevisani's wife, is one of the portfolio managers of the International Value Fund.

By investing in the International Value Fund, clients "move away from U.S. equities and diversify on a global basis," Pete Trevisani said.

Trevisani, a graduate of Boston College and Columbia University's MBA program, moved to Santa Fe 10 years ago and took over the Institutional Group, which at the time had about $300 million in assets.

"It took about two years to get things going," Trevisani said. "We focused on the operations' structure and getting the technical systems in place. "It was a situation, 'If we build it, they will come.' "

And come they did.

The Institutional Group now has about $18 billion in assets under management, following a comeback from a significant drop last year as a result of the economic recession and the credit crunch.

The bankruptcy of Thornburg Mortgage, which was a separate business entity from Thornburg Investment Management, did have a short-term negative impact on the Institutional Group.

"I can't quantify it," Trevisani said. "We didn't lose any clients because of it. We lost some potential new clients."

The impact seems to have been short-lived. "We're seeing a strong fund flow this year," Trevisani said. "The market has rebounded. We have about
$2 billion from new clients."










-