Fidelity Realigns US Management

Matthew Smith

9 January 2007

US mutual fund giant, Fidelity Investments, has decided to not replace Stephen Jonas, an executive director in the group’s Investment Management & Research division, who announced his retirement from the firm, effective at the end of January. Instead the company said it would “realign” the existing senior management team, with Fidelity vice chairman and chief operating officer of the division, Robert Reynolds, taking up many of the responsibilities previously handled by Mr. Jonas. This included the reorganisation of Investment Management & Research initiated by Jonas two years ago following a slip in the mutual fund giant’s domestic equities performance. Fidelity is the largest manager of mutual fund assets in the US, with managed assets of more than $1.3 trillion as of 30 November 2006. It invests almost one in six dollars placed by Americans in mutual funds. There are currently few of Fidelity’s mutual funds rated four or five-stars by researcher, Morningstar. Its largest, the $45 billion Magellan fund, has a two-star rating and is below benchmark over one, three, five and 10 years. The manager remains strong in fixed interest and foreign equities. However Mr Reynolds said, the Fidelity investment organisation is now as strong as ever as a result of “the many organisational initiatives that Steve and his senior team put into place.” The senior Fidelity Investment Management and Research Company team includes president of the equity division, Walter Donovan; president of the fixed-income division, Boyce Greer; and president of investment services, Dwight Churchill. In his nearly 20-year career at Fidelity, Mr Jonas held a number of senior operational and financial positions, including chief financial officer and chief administrative officer of Investment Management and Research. Prior to being named executive director of Fidelity, Mr Jonas served as president of Fidelity Enterprise Operations and Risk Services.