Three generations at Fidelity
Abigail Johnson's fortune comes from her family's ownership of FMR LLC, the parent company of Fidelity Investments. Her grandfather, Edward C. Johnson II, a Boston lawyer with a deep interest in the stock market, took over management of the Fidelity Fund in 1943 and founded Fidelity Management and Research in 1946 to advise it.
Her father, Edward C. Johnson III, known as Ned, became head of the company in 1977 and transformed it. Under his leadership Fidelity built a family of actively managed mutual funds, became a leader in retirement plan administration for employers, launched a discount brokerage and invested heavily in technology. Funds such as Magellan, run by the star manager Peter Lynch in the 1980s, made Fidelity a household name.
Fidelity has never been a listed company. Ownership is shared between the Johnson family and senior employees, and the family holds a large share of the voting and economic interest. Abigail Johnson inherited part of that holding and has added to her standing by running the firm herself. Her wealth therefore reflects both a family inheritance and the growth of Fidelity during her years as a senior executive, but the original business was built by her grandfather and father.
Fidelity's main business lines
Fidelity Investments is one of the largest financial services firms in the United States. Its main activities include:
- Asset management: mutual funds, exchange traded funds and index funds sold to individuals and institutions
- Workplace retirement: administration of 401(k) and other retirement plans for employers
- Brokerage and wealth management: accounts for individual investors and services for independent financial advisers
- Digital assets: Fidelity Digital Assets, which provides custody and trading for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and spot bitcoin exchange traded funds
- Investment ventures: Fidelity's corporate venture and real estate arms
The company is based in Boston and employs large numbers of people across the United States, India and Ireland. A separate firm, Fidelity International, which serves investors outside North America, was spun off in 1980 and is also partly owned by the Johnson family.
Under Abigail Johnson, Fidelity introduced zero expense ratio index funds in 2018, eliminated commissions on online stock trades and made an early commitment to digital assets, testing bitcoin mining internally years before most established financial firms took the asset class seriously.
Education and the path to the top
Abigail Pierrepont Johnson was born in 1961 in Boston. She studied art history at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York state, graduating in 1984, and worked at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton before going to Harvard Business School, where she earned an MBA in 1988.
She joined Fidelity that year as an equity analyst and later became a portfolio manager running several funds. She then moved into management, taking roles that included leading Fidelity's asset management arm and its workplace retirement and personal investing businesses, where she gained broad experience across the company.
In 2012 she was named president of Fidelity Investments, and in 2014 she succeeded her father as chief executive. In 2016 she also became chairman, completing the transfer of leadership from Ned Johnson, who remained chairman emeritus until his death in 2022. She is married to Christopher McKown, a co-founder of the healthcare company Iora Health.
Giving and public profile
The Johnson family has long kept a low public profile, and Abigail Johnson rarely gives interviews, although she has spoken at industry conferences about technology, digital assets and the future of investing.
The family supports philanthropy through foundations, including the Fidelity Foundation, which was set up decades ago by the founding Johnson family and gives to arts and culture, health, education and community organizations, and through personal giving that is seldom publicized. Fidelity is also associated with Fidelity Charitable, a donor advised fund program launched in 1991 that allows clients to set aside money for charity and recommend grants. It is an independent public charity and has become one of the largest grant makers in the United States.
Johnson has served on boards of civic and educational institutions in Boston and has been involved with business organizations in Massachusetts. As one of very few women to run a major American asset manager, she is often cited as an example of female leadership in finance, although she has generally kept the focus of her public statements on Fidelity's business rather than on her personal story.