Deals & People April 19, 2007

Changes In Fidelity's Ranks

Fidelity Investments’ Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer Robert L. Reynolds announced his departure today.
Reported by
The Boston-based investment company also announced an executive appointment for its product and services distribution channel, according to a company news release.
Reynolds’ Fidelity career began in 1984 and included a stint as president of Fidelity Investments Institutional Retirement Group (now FESCo), before assuming his current position in June 2000.
“After 23 years at Fidelity – and the past seven as Chief Operating Officer – I feel it’s time for some new experiences,” Reynolds asserted in the news release. “Therefore, I’ve decided to take the opportunity that change always affords to stop and reassess my next 23 years. Like so many other American Baby Boomers, I’m contemplating the exciting challenges and opportunities that lie ahead of me. I’m not certain at this time where my many varied interests will lead me, but I’ll always look back fondly on my Fidelity career.”
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Edward Johnson had kind words for the departing executive. “Bob Reynolds has made tremendous contributions to Fidelity during his extensive career here,” said Johnson, in the news release. “We thank Bob for his great efforts on Fidelity’s behalf, and of course wish him all the best in the future.”
Also Thursday, Fidelity announced that Ellyn A. McColgan has been named president, Distribution and Operations. In this role, McColgan will oversee distribution of the company’s products and services sold to individual investors and through third-party intermediaries – as well as a group of the firm’s other operations, according to the news release.
McColgan, now president of Fidelity Brokerage Company (FBC) will oversee a number of Fidelity’s other distribution and operations functions, including Fidelity Investments Institutional Services Company (FIIS), under the leadership of Joseph P. LoRusso; Fidelity Investments Life Insurance Company (FILI), under the leadership of Jon J. Skillman; and Fidelity Enterprise Operations, under the leadership of Raymond J. Marcinowski, Fidelity said.
Sharing distribution leadership with McColgan is Johnson’s daughter Abigail who will continue in her role as president of Fidelity Employer Services Company (FESCo), which provides defined contribution and defined benefit retirement services, employer benefits and human resources administration, and payroll services to more than 20 million American employees and retirees.
Finally, Fidelity said that John J. Remondi has been named interim chief administrative officer and will oversee functions such as Human Resources, Finance and Enterprise Services, which includes Legal, Risk and Compliance, Corporate Affairs, Real Estate, Regional Management, Public Policy and Government Relations.
In Practice April 18, 2007

Are City Folk Less Trusting Than Country Folk?

When it comes to social trust, there's a significant difference between living in the city and the country - it's just not entirely clear why.
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However, the study’s authors admitted that it was complicated to figure out a specific relationship between where people lived and their level of trust. They noted that more poor people and minorities live in cities – two groups that are among the least trusting segments of society. Little wonder that, since people who feel vulnerable or disadvantaged tend to find it riskier to trust because they’re not positioned to deal with what the study authors called “the consequences of misplaced trust.” But even after adjusting for those factors, researchers still found that city folks are less trusting than people who live in suburbs, small towns or rural areas.

“Close” Nest?
They then turned to the issue of physical proximity, wondering if we might be less inclined to trust people in a more compressed living environment. And, though an analysis of the Pew survey data did find a slight tendency for levels of social trust to fall as population density (analyzed on a county-by-county basis) rises, the survey also found that people who describe where they live as a rural area are the most trusting; people who say they live in a large city are the least trusting; and those who say they live in a suburb or a small towns fall somewhere in between.
But it’s by no means clear that there is any causal connection in any of this. In fact, one of the reasons that smaller communities have long been thought to foster trust was that they were places where “everybody knows your name” (ironically, part of the theme song from “Cheers”, a bar in large-city Boston).
Suburban “Sprawl”
Regardless of trust levels, the Pew Research found that people living in a suburb near a big city were most likely to rate their community as an “excellent’ place to live (36%), narrowly squeezing aside their rural cousins, where 34% rated home that highly. That stands in some contrast to just 22% of those who lived in a large city – and, perhaps oddly, just 20% of those who, like those in the John Mellencamp song, live in a “small town”.
In short, the community type findings are a bit of a puzzle. When it comes to social trust, it’s true that there’s a significant difference between living in the city and the country – it’s just not – yet – entirely clear why.

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