PHOENIX Investment Counsel is pooling the institutional marketing efforts of seven of its eight units into a newly created marketing, sales and client service organization. The new Institutional Markets Group is mandated with providing better penetration into new markets, said the firm.

The firm also named Thomas N. Steenburg, chairman and chief executive officer of Phoenix unit Duff & Phelps Investment Management, as president of the group and Thomas A. Meyers, as executive vice president and chief distribution officer. Meyers was most recently a senior vice president at Conseco Capital Management and will report to Steenburg.

Steenburg said that the firm plans to leverage the success of its money managers in "specific institutional market segments, introducing new clients to our managers in markets where we have had traditionally little or no presence."

A spokesperson elaborated by adding that the firm is also looking to add products from its partners into existing relationships and that it is specifically targeting the Taft-Hartley plan, corporate pension plan, public pension plan, endowment and foundation markets. To date those services have been marketed by each of the partner companies separately. The existing 22 sales and marketing staff not a part of Seneca will be brought into one unit.

The firm said it has no current plans to change the number of employees in this unit but that it will be considering increasing the number in the unit in the future.

The eight partner companies include: Duff & Phelps, Roger Engemann and Associates, Seneca Capital Management, Aberdeen Fund Managers, Zweig Advisors, and Phoenix Investment Counsel's three units Hollister, Oakhurst, Goodwin.

Seneca Capital Management will continue to maintain its own dedicated institutional marketing and service staff.  

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