Fidelity Investments - Mutual Funds and Stock Brokerage

Mutual Funds and Stock Brokerage

Fidelity is a privately held company founded by Edward C. Johnson II in 1946, which is owned by employees and the Johnson family. Fidelity Management & Research Company, the US investment management division of Fidelity Investments, acts as the investment adviser to Fidelity's family of mutual funds. FMR Co has three fund divisions: Equity (headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts), High-Income (Boston) and Fixed-Income (Merrimack, New Hampshire). The company's subsidiaries serve as distributors and transfer agents to the entire Fidelity fund family.

FMR serves more than 20 million investors through individual and institutional accounts, with more than 500 different funds, and is one of the largest US mutual fund companies with nearly $3.3 trillion in assets under administration and $1.5 trillion of assets under management as of September 30, 2010. Fidelity Investment Managers managed over $230 billion of international assets as of September 30, 2010.

The company's largest equity mutual fund is Contrafund, which has more than $68 billion in assets as of September 30, 2010, making it the largest single-manager fund in the US. The current manager of Contrafund is Will Danoff. Magellan Fund is another large equity fund, over $20 billion in assets as of September 30, 2010. Its current manager is Jeffrey S. Feingold, who previously managed, and will continue to manage, the Fidelity Trend Fund. The Magellan Fund was for many years the largest in the United States. It was run by Ned Johnson (May 2, 1963 to Dec. 31, 1971) and Peter Lynch (May 31, 1977 to May 31, 1990).

Fidelity Investments also operates a major online discount brokerage and has investor centers in over 140 locations throughout the US.

Through its subsidiary, National Financial Services LLC, Fidelity Investments provides a number of services to its correspondent broker-dealers, institutional investment firms and registered investment advisors including brokerage clearing, back office support and a suite of software products for financial services firms. National Financial custodied over $443 billion in assets, in 4.3 million accounts as of September 30, 2010.

In November 2011, Fidelity Investments and Verizon Communications Inc announced a joint project to provide better instant access for subscribers to the Fidelity Market Monitor Application.