Fidelity Investments told the Reuters Fund Summit, which was held in Boston this week, that it had no plans to offer hedge funds, even though its competitors are meeting investor demand for the.
“We have elected not to provide those types of funds, and we don’t see that changing in the near future,” said Robert Reynolds, Fidelity’s vice chairman and chief operating officer. He added that he saw a conflict of interest in running hedge as well as mutual funds. “We want to try to avoid those conflicts,” he said. This was understood to be a reference to short-selling.
Fidelity, like some of its competitors, has lost some of its best fund managers to the hedge fund industry. David Glancy, who had been running Fidelity’s best returning fund, left last year, and before him John Muresianu quit to start his own hedge fund. Still, Reynolds said Fidelity will not try to keep excellent stock pickers by offering them a chance to run a hedge fund in-house.