Ned-o-nomics

Ned Johnson hates, hates, hates being late. But last December 13, on the evening of his company's holiday party, the 77-year-old Fidelity chief was finding that the fickle New England weather was conspiring to make him just that. Though his firm had hired a fleet of buses from BostonCoach (which it owns) to shuttle employees to the World Trade Center (which it also owns), its preparations were rendered moot by a blizzard that had been dumping close to 2 inches of snow an hour on Boston since midday. On the twisting streets around Fidelity's downtown headquarters, traffic was inching along at a near-standstill.

Fidelity's annual holiday blowout traditionally has been a happy event, a night to unwind and toast the company's latest stretch of prodigious growth. As far back as the early 1970s, Johnson's father, who then controlled the company, used to dance with each of his secretaries before the festivities were over, twirling to tunes wheezed out on an accordion; Johnson himself is always among the last to leave. But on this night, the dismal weather seemed a fitting coda for a rough year for the mutual fund giant. A few weeks earlier, the independent credit-rating agency Moody's had issued a scathing report on Johnson's “lack of transparency” regarding his long-term plans for Fidelity, pointing out that the firm's mutual funds had limped through a period of uncharacteristically poor performance. Criticism ran rampant that Johnson's close-to-the-vest control of the company, an approach that had served him well for decades, was hurting Fidelity. And the drumbeat of serious doubts over whether Ned's daughter, Abigail Johnson, has what it takes to one day assume leadership of the company was louder than ever.

Rather than brave the gridlock outside, a few Fidelity employees bundled into their coats and decided to forgo the company buses in favor of the Silver Line, squeezing on at South Station. Packed in tight, the group was shaking snow from their jackets when one of them noticed that Johnson had joined them. If any of the other passengers recognized the thin, white-haired man in the rumpled suit and big glasses—a prospect made unlikely by the low profile Johnson toils to keep—it must have been jarring. No bigshot businessman is supposed to take public transportation, and the thought of Johnson—a billionaire 10 times over—riding the T strains comprehension. Yet there he was. Appearances be damned, he had a party to get to, and had found the most efficient way to get there.

Johnson is notoriously short on explanations about his decisions. He reveals little to his 46,000 employees and even less to the press. (Years ago he rebuffed a reporter with a question of his own: “Are you people so fucking bored that you have nothing better to write about than us?”) Silence of this sort gives rise to a certain mystique, and with it, a powerful curiosity regarding his motives and intentions. Indeed, divining meaning from something as simple as buying a $1.70 ride on the Silver Line has become, for Johnson watchers, a kind of parlor game. Once when he transferred some Fidelity shares, a few observers took it as a sure sign of his impending retirement. That was in 1995.

Now, people are again speculating about the future of Fidelity, and there is an unprecedented urgency to their questions. More than just dominating its industry, the firm stands as one of the last homegrown titans Bostonians can still call their own. Whether it will hold on to either of those distinctions depends on a script that Johnson alone has the power to write. As usual, he isn't talking, which, given the stakes for the city, makes his trademark opacity all the more vexing.

And yet. Maybe it is possible to divine Johnson's grand plan. When dealing with a man who has built an empire on very calculated investments, as he has, it's not crazy to think there might be hidden meaning in the purchases he has made with his fortune. And indeed, if you study a few of the things he's bought for himself and his company, you find that they tell you this: Despite what the analysts may want him to do, Ned Johnson is plotting Fidelity's future the only way he could be expected to.