BOSTON — At age 77, Edward “Ned” Johnson III can’t keep this pace up forever. But it sometimes seems the Fidelity Investments chief hopes to.
Johnson’s tenure running the nation’s largest mutual fund company has spanned three decades — the only other change of leadership in 61 years at Fidelity was when Johnson took over for his father. But the job has become increasingly complex as Johnson tries to fend off rivals’ gains and streamline operations, while outsiders’ calls for governance reform grow louder.
“He hasn’t missed a beat, and a lot of people have crumbled while he’s still going 100 miles per hour,” says Eric Kobren, a former Fidelity employee who edits the independent money advice newsletter Fidelity Investor. He suspects Johnson “isn’t going anywhere soon.”
The notoriously insular company isn’t publicly offering a time line for leadership change, or disclosing details of a succession plan it says it has in place, even amid some suggestions that the uncertainty could be hurting Fidelity’s competitiveness.
The heir apparent — Johnson’s 46-year-old daughter, Abigail Johnson — has not been confirmed as such, and some observers question whether she even wants the job. And a flurry of management and organizational changes this year eliminated two other successor candidates from contention.
Outsiders still regard Abigail Johnson as an odds-on favorite for the top job, by virtue not only of her bloodline, but the diversity of management positions she’s held overseeing Fidelity’s increasingly far-flung financial services.
But her father is still firmly in charge — and by all accounts, apparently healthy.
“Nothing has told me that he’s anxious to pass the baton very quickly, unless something were to develop with his health, or some family issue,” said Patrick McGovern, a friend who occasionally dines with Johnson and is founder and chairman of IDG Group, a Boston-based technology research and publishing firm.
Fidelity rarely makes executives available for interviews and declined requests from the Associated Press. A recent statement issued by Ned Johnson on succession planning described a continuing process to “pass the corporation on in good operating order to the next generation of executives at the appropriate time.”
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