Fidelity's World: The Secret Life and Public Power of the Mutual Fund Giant

by Diana B. Henriques

Overview

Raising questions about the stability of the mutual fund investment industry, a business reporter for The New York Times describes how Fidelity used its power to bend the rules of investing to its own advantage.

Fidelity's World: The Secret Life and Public Power of the Mutual Fund Giant is an in-depth portrait of an investment empire reveals Fidelity's dramatic impact on America's corporations and individual investors.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780684832234
Publisher:	Touchstone
Publication date:	03/06/1997
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Diana Blackmon Henriques is an American financial journalist and author working in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

The image of Fidelity Investments' mutual fund empire as a safe haven for small investors is outmoded, asserts New York Times business reporter Henriques. Pushed by Fidelity's constant innovations, including junk bond funds and other gimmicky products, the mutual fund industry is now a speculative bazaar, she maintains. This swiftly told, incisive history chronicles Fidelity's rise from a sluggish, conservative Boston fund with a $5 million investment portfolio in 1944 to the world's largest mutual fund company, with over $4 billion under its control plus a huge stock-trading operation-a company so powerful that it virtually dictated the terms under which both R.H. Macy and Federated Department Stores were reorganized after their respective bankruptcies and then single-handedly brought about the merger of these chains. Henriques is troubled by what she describes as Fidelity's bullying tactics in the 1980s to force the liquidation or reorganization of small companies, and by its recent entry into the ``vulture market'' of bankruptcy investing. Author tour. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Henriques, an investigative business reporter for the New York Times, has written an important but scary book about the growth of the mutual fund industry and, in particular, Fidelity, which holds billions of dollars worth of small investors' retirement savings. Henriques sees regulatory laxity and conflicts of interest by portfolio managers as alarmingly common. Because of the influence of services that rate the funds according to their yields, funds have taken irresponsible risks with investors' money to get higher ratings. The author was never allowed close to the elusive head of Fidelity, so much of this study is taken from public documents. The large cast of characters and complicated financial maneuvers will probably limit readership to those with some financial background, but this belongs in most business collections.-Sue McKimm, Cuyahoga Cty. P.L., Parma, Ohio

Library Journal