Meghan Shue, Wilmington Trust's EVP and chief investment strategist, spent much of 2025 explaining a market that often felt more threatening than its returns suggested.
Utilizing tools honed from her nearly two decades in investment research, Shue guided her ultra-high-net-worth investor clientele through the volatility around tariffs, geopolitics, inflation and fears of AI-related economic disruption. She urged them to stay the course, a strategy vindicated as the S&P 500 recovered quickly from the April market shock.
"It was a bit of an unloved market," Shue said of 2025. "The constant challenge is taking the emotional reactions that our clients might have and helping them see the bigger picture—the value more than anything else of staying invested."
The numbers back her intuition. Parent M&T Bank's trust income was a strong driver of fee income growth, increasing 7% in 2025—with 9% growth in revenue coming from subsidiary Wilmington Trust's institutional services and 5% from wealth management.
The ultra-high-net-worth portfolios served by her team outperformed the bank's internal strategic benchmarks in two of the prior three years, according to Wilmington Trust, which had total assets of $773 million in 2025, up from $711 million the year prior.
Based in Radnor, PA, Shue leads Wilmington Trust's asset-allocation process, portfolio construction and market research. She is also one of the firm's most visible external voices on investment strategy, including as an
At Wilmington, Shue chairs the portfolio management committee and is the senior woman on the investment committee.
She originally joined Wilmington Trust nearly nine years ago as a senior strategist after working for Bessemer Trust in asset allocation strategy and leading white-paper research duties.
Shue helps develop Wilmington Trust's annual flagship Capital Markets Forecast
Those conversations offer a ground-level check on national economic data, Shue said, particularly when business owners discuss hiring plans, costs and supply-chain conditions.
Outside work, Shue and her husband are raising two children. She volunteers at youth swim meets and coaches recreational soccer. A former Division I collegiate swimmer, she is now training for triathlons and mentors women at the firm.
The Princeton graduate credits one of her own early career mentors with helping shape the communication skills she uses with clients and television audiences. The most useful lesson she provided, said Shue, was to slow down rather than rush to fill conversational gaps.
"Do not fear the silence," Shue said after a moment's reflection, tellingly. "A lot of us get uncomfortable with pauses. We want to fill the space—saying 'um' and 'you know'—but I really try to embrace the silence. It helps the audience to digest what we're trying to say."
