Edward Johnson III, who made Fidelity an investment giant, dead at 91

Edward “Ned” Johnson III, who transformed Fidelity Investments into a financial giant and the largest administrator of workplace retirement plans, died Wednesday at his Florida home. He was 91.

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Johnson died in Wellington, west of West Palm Beach, The New York Times reported. The Boston native’s death was announced on LinkedIn by his daughter, Abigail Johnson, the current chief executive of the firm.

“He passed away peacefully at home in Florida surrounded by his family,” Abigail Johnson, who succeeded her father as CEO in 2014, wrote in her post on Thursday.

Ned Johnson inherited the Boston company from his father in the 1970s in the middle of a bear market that dampened enthusiasm for Wall Street and the mutual funds that Fidelity sold, according to The Wall Street Journal. Ned Johnson pushed the firm to remake itself through a series of new ventures, the newspaper reported.

Johnson joined his father’s firm in 1957 as a portfolio manager, according to The Associated Press. He became president of Fidelity in 1972 and, after his father retired in 1976, became chairman and CEO. He served in that position for more than 40 years, CNN reported. He transformed the company into the nation’s second-largest management company.

In 1974, the company helped popularize the money-market business by allowing customers to write checks against its money fund, the Times reported.

“They were the unquestioned industry leader,” John C. Bogle, founder of the archrival Vanguard Group, told the Times before his death in 2019.

When Johnson became president, Fidelity had $3.9 billion in assets under management, according to CNN. When he retired as chairman, that figure had risen to $2.1 trillion with another $5.7 trillion in assets under administration, the news network reported.

The firm had $11.1 trillion in assets under administration, as of its February filing, CNN reported.

During Ned Johnson’s tenure, Fidelity built the nation’s biggest 401(k) business, helping millions save for retirement, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“He was a true visionary,” John M. Boyd, a financial services executive and a former Fidelity employee, told the Times.

His enthusiasm for stocks helped rekindle many Americans’ love affair with the market.

“Fidelity would have stagnated had Ned not come in and created a brand new company,” Joshua Berman, a longtime legal adviser to Ned Johnson, told The Wall Street Journal.

Edward Crosby Johnson III was born on June 29, 1930, in Boston, and grew up in suburban Milton, the Times reported. The Johnson family, which has Boston roots dating to 1635, made its initial fortune with the C.F. Hovey & Company department store, according to the newspaper.

He graduated from Harvard in 1954 and joined his father’s company three years later.

Johnson founded the Brookfield Arts Foundation, owned several hundred grandfather clocks, and once had an entire two-story house disassembled in China and flown to a museum in Salem, Massachusetts, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“He was a very, very unusual man,” Berman told the newspaper. “He was passionately curious about just about anything.”

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