Argent's John Meara Puts Focus on Service; Five Questions; Capital Management Firm, Founded Here in 1998, Is Adding Employees

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When John Meara and Steven Finerty co-founded investment firm Argent Capital Management in 1998, the dot-com bubble hadn't burst yet. Clients were clamoring for more tech stocks.

But Meara, president and chief investment officer at Clayton- based Argent, stuck with his investment philosophy, which included focusing on large companies in diverse industries and with equity market capitalizations of $3 billion or more. This minimized losses when the bubble finally burst.

That early success helped Argent grow to more than $1.7 billion under management and more than 600 clients, which include individual investors and institutional investors such as pension funds …