Love em or hate em. No one can deny the impact that hedge funds have had on the institutional equities business in recent years and will continue to have. That influence was subtly highlighted only last month when mutual fund giant Fidelity Investments named Brian Conroy, a hedge fund executive and former head trader at SAC Capital Management, to oversee its equity trading department. To be sure, Conroy was a well-respected Wall St. veteran-Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan-before moving to the hedge fund world. But the hire may indicate that the normally insular Fidelity is open to new equity trading ideas, possibly even opportunistic ones.
“That’s a big statement,” said one brokerage firm executive commenting on the hire. He wondered if Fidelity was looking to become more aggressive in its trading style, adding that he found it interesting it hireda person without mutual fund experience.
