Our History
A short history
Nearly 40 years ago, Fidelity Worldwide Investment came into being, with our founding office in Bermuda in 1969. A second office was opened in Tokyo in the same year, with our London office opening in 1973. Since then, we’ve expanded our global network of offices across Europe and the Asia Pacific region, as well as India and the Middle East. We’ve always been committed to creating funds that allow our clients’ investments to grow. Our US affiliate, Fidelity Management and Research, was founded in Boston in 1946 and is one of the country's largest mutual fund companies.
Fidelity has investment management activities based out of London, Paris, Milan, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney and Taipei. We have years of investment experience. But we certainly don't have a set way of doing things. Always professional, and always inventive in our thought, our money management expertise and entrepreneurial culture mean that, today, we manage more than $207.9 billion1 for millions of investors around the world - from major institutions to private individuals. Not bad for a relatively young company.
What we do
In a nutshell, Fidelity manages money on behalf of other people. These can be individuals like you (an area that we call Retail), who we deal with either directly by phone or over the web, or via third parties (for example Independent Financial Advisors and banks). We also distribute our own, as well as other fund company's products via the internet directly to the public.
Another area of our business involves providing services to large institutions and organisations (which we refer to as the Institutional Business). We aim to offer them the very best returns within defined risk parameters, through capital markets. The money that we manage is invested in a range of funds and includes equity (stocks and shares), fixed income (bonds), cash and now even property companies.
Fidelity around the world
In the UK, we are one of the largest investment fund managers and a leading provider of ISA’s. We also lead the way in web-based investment, with our fund supermarket, FundsNetwork™ - the leading UK service in its field. Across Europe, our large teams of portfolio managers and research professionals2 give us a thorough understanding of the companies we invest in. We opened our first office in India in 2004 and have continued to launch new funds there ever since. In Japan, we're one of the leading foreign asset managers and we’re expanding our presence across much of the Asia Pacific region.
How we do what we do
Everything we do is centred on thorough, intelligent insight. Our analysts go further to understand every investment opportunity. This means they look further than a company’s bottom line or website. They do their research on the ground, visiting the shop floor to meet the people at the sharp end. By delving deeper and understanding opportunities that little bit better, we consistently add value for investors in our funds.
This research is shared across our global network, which gives us a strong, consistent approach to managing money around the world. It also helps us ensure that every security is investigated as thoroughly as possible before being included in our funds. With teams across the globe, we cover 95% of the world's stock markets by capitalisation. This gives us valuable insights into how attractive an investment opportunity is on a global scale and allows us a view of world markets that few other investment managers are able to match.
- This figure reflects the assets of FIL Limited. Source: FIL Limited, as of 30.09.11.
- Research Professionals include both analysts and associates.