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

by Diana B. Henriques

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. 30,000 first printing. Tour.

Genres: Business, History, Nonfiction

416 pages, Hardcover

Published October 11, 1995

About the author

Diana B. Henriques is the author of 'The White Sharks of Wall Street' and 'Fidelity's World.' She is a senior financial writer for The New York Times, having joined the Times staff in 1989.

A Polk Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Henriques has won several awards for her work on the Times' coverage of the Madoff scandal and was part of the team recognized as a Pulitzer finalist for its coverage of the financial crisis of 2008. She lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book about the early days of Fidelity. Pity is was written in the mid-90's as I wanted more up to date information. Really impressed by the hold the Johnson's have over the company and the focus of the organization. Ruthless, very ruthless.
Fidelity is notoriously secretive, so this book is a dedication to the persistence of Henriques. Fascinating story - just wonder how much it has changed since.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though this book's name is Fidelity's World, most of the earlier chapters focus on the highlights of the mutual fund industry and its high and low, from the birth of mutual fund in Boston to rise of Fidelity veterans as well as their falls. The first chapter on the Kaiser Steel case was slightly confusing and hard to follow due to my lack of understanding on how company slate, voting rights, and deals work. But the author provides enough timeline and context to convey how powerful Fidelity is to be spin table around, multiple times. After chapter 1, I enjoyed the introduction of key mutual fund players (Massachusetts Investment Trust, Incorporated Investors, and State Street), the gradual approach of the 1929 Crash, and the step in of Congress and birth of SEC. It is interesting to see so many lawyers turn investment managers. The law background seems to really help build connections within the industry and interaction/lobbying with Congress. The chapters on Gerry Tsai, Bernie Cornfield, and Ned Johnson are my favorites. It shows how "creative" one could be around the laws and revolutionize the mutual fund space with their own management style. All the scandals, lawsuits, innovations, and changes are thoroughly and chronologically explained. The world wars and other political scandals between forties and seventies caused some of the industry's misconducts to go unnoticed and only unraveled when SEC accidentally investigated something else. I recommend googling phrases (i.e., corporate raid) and key names to better understand certain events in the book.

[Russell Chee · Rating 2 out of 5]

this is good on the journalistic/reporting aspects, esp on the early origins of the company, but I think the author gets very confused over the notion of scale later on - seems to think that scale is inherently bad, a mistake that modern commentators make about Big Tech too - and this consequently makes the reading quite tiresome, because it becomes just about fraud and 'abuse of power' rather than anything interesting about the continued growth of the company. still a great resource for the early days.

[Chris · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is garbage.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's a lot of railing against the mutual fund industry, but you won't actually learn very much about Fidelity.