Fiduciary Trust names Doris Meister president, CEO

Doris Meister, former chair and CEO of Wilmington Trust, has been named president and CEO of Fiduciary Trust Company, according to WealthManagement.com.

Meister succeeds Austin Shapard at the Boston-based firm, per the report. Terms of the move were not disclosed.

Fiduciary Trust Company is bringing in an outside chief executive who has already run a large trust institution. That is a deliberate signal that the firm wants to raise its game in the competitive Boston trust market, where institutions fight for high-net-worth and family-office relationships.

The move also underscores the intensifying talent war at the top of the wealth industry. Firms increasingly recruit sitting or former chief executives from larger organizations rather than waiting for internal succession to mature.

Going outside the firm to fill the CEO seat suggests Fiduciary Trust Company's board wanted a different operating profile than an internal successor would have offered. Executives with Meister's resume — former chair and CEO of a major trust firm — rarely take a new CEO post without a mandate to grow the business, modernize it, or both.

The move is also a reminder that the talent market for trust and wealth leadership is tightening. When firms like Fiduciary Trust Company reach outside for a chief executive, they are signaling that the experience required to compete for legacy and ultra-high-net-worth clients is not something they can wait years to develop internally.

Watch for whether Meister moves quickly to sharpen Fiduciary Trust Company's client strategy or brings in additional senior talent from outside the firm.