Think before you email a fundster.

At least one mutual fund industry CEO, John Rogers of Chicago-based Ariel Investments [profile], avoids email as a "distraction," Reuters reports. An Ariel spokeswoman tells the wire service that Rogers' staff acts as email gatekeepers, printing up important emails and putting them on his chair. Rogers, Reuters reveals, prefers in-person or phone conversation to written ones.

John Rogers Ariel Investments Founder, Chairman, CEO and CIO

Rogers is in good company in the Reuters article, as J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and famed investors Carl Icahn and Warren Buffett are also IDed as email avoiders. (Dimon, for example, is famous for one- or two-word email responses.)

And it's not just about communication comfort.

"Since the financial crisis, executives really have to be prepared for anything they say to potentially end up on the front page of the New York Times," MIT Sloan School of Management lecturer Virginia Healy-Tangney tells Reuters. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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