Jul. 17–Fidelity Investments will not take additional special measures to try to retain top-flight talent after its best stock picker this year quit Tuesday to start a hedge fund, the mutual fundcompany said yesterday.

David Glancy, who managed the $720 million Leveraged Company Stock fund to a torrid 50 percent return through the first half of the year, and also knocked out a 27 percent return in a separate junk-bond fund he also ran, will start the hedge fund with Richard Barrett, who was Fidelity’s director of high-yield research, according to analysts who follow the Boston mutual fund giant.

Glancy is the fourth manager to leave the firm this year, and several others have left over the past year or so to join rival firms or manage money at their own operation.

“We don’t like to lose talented individuals but recognize it’s inevitably going to happen,” said Fidelity spokeswoman Anne Crowley.

She said Fidelity continually tries to improve its work environment, support structure, and pay packages to keep top talent, but won’t, for example, introduce hedge fund-style investing — which can pay managers huge rewards — to prevent its investment professionals from jumping ship.

“We’ve gone to great lengths to keep our best people. That means keeping pace with the markets and our industry. It also means ensuring our investment professionals receive competitive compensation packages, which include” stock ownership in Fidelity, she said.

And despite the defection of a high-profile manager such as Glancy, Crowley said the firm’s turnover is low. Fidelity has 609 investment professionals worldwide, 158 of whom are portfolio managers.

Reached at his home last night, Glancy declined to comment.

John Bonnanzio, group editor of Fidelity Insight, a Wellesley newsletter, also doesn’t think Fidelity can do much when a hot talent wants to go out on his or her own. “This a company that hires aggressive, smart young people. They train them, incubate them. Some of them turn into superstars and get up and go.”

If anything, the defection gave Fidelity yet another chance to display the deep bench of talent it can call on to fill high-profile holes in its investment lineup.

For example, Fidelity tapped Thomas Soviero to replace Glancy at the Leveraged Company Stock fund, and a similar smaller fund. Soviero is also the manager of the Fidelity Advisor High Income Advantage fund, which gained nearly 29 percent through June 30, better than nearly all others in its category of high-yield funds. Soviero will continue to manage his old fund.

Also, Mark Notkin will take Glancy’s place running the Capital & Income fund. The high-yield portfolio Notkin has run returned 17.19 percent through the first half of the year. And another high-yield manager, Matthew Conti, who will take over Notkin’s former portfolio, has a pretty good track record over the last year in his own fund, besting 86 percent of funds in his category, Fidelity said.

Still, Glancy’s departure is a loss for Fidelity. But after 13 years with the company, analysts said it was natural to expect that after such a strong run the 41-year-old Glancy would want to try the potentially more lucrative pastures of a hedge fund, which are less regulated but offer managers much greater flexibility in investing money. Hedge fund managers, when successful, can reap as much as 20 percent of the profits in their portfolio, in addition to charging management fees.

Glancy had also been accumulating numerous press accolades in recent weeks, including being on the cover of the July edition of SmartMoney magazine, for his prowess in making bets on distressed or debt-laden companies, especially in the beleaguered telecommunications and wireless sectors.

Long-term, Glancy’s numbers are excellent. The Capital & Income fund had a 65 percent total return, or 6.9 percent average annual gain, since he started running it in January 1996, compared to a 56 percent total return, or 6.1 percent annually, for a widely followed high-yield bond index, according to Bonnanzio.

Leveraged Company Stock had a 52.5 percent total return since he started running the fund from its inception in January 2001. Over the same period the Standard & Poor’s 500 index lost around 23 percent.

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