Can Abby Johnson succeed with at the top of her family's firm with her low-key management style and distaste for the limelight?

Today in Bloomberg Businessweek there's an exhaustive profile of the Fidelity [profile] heir that looks at just this question -- how Johnson's public persona and management style and how they might be a boon, or a burden, when she eventually takes over the firm. Reporter Suzanna Andrews thinks that Johnson's eventual ascent to Fidelity's top post will be an opportunity to redirect the firm, which has, she says, been hurt a few poor decisions at the top -- the delay in launching ETFs and poor marketing, which has hurt flows.

Johnson's rise to the top of her father's firm has made her arguably the most powerful woman in finance -- as well as "one of the most driven and hardworking" women anywhere, Andrews writes -- which could be a marketing opportunity for the firm.

"A woman atop the company -- guiding strategy in the boardroom and delivering the message on TV -- could attract a raft of new customers. The question is: Does Abby Johnson want to be that woman?" Andrews writes.

Then we're taken on a tour through Johnson's life up to now, from the early years when her "flinty distaste for public displays of wealth" led her to take a summer job waiting tables, through the "serious illness in 2007 that she never discussed with colleagues," an illness that, nevertheless, rarely required her to miss a day of work, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

Though Johnson herself didn't speak with the magazine, Andrews got some quotes from Fidelity Investments president of asset management and corporate services Ronald O'Hanley, who testified to her understated style.

"She is really driven by things that others might find exhausting or even uninteresting," such as technology and management processes, said O'Hanley. "She doesn't lead by fiat or by raising her voice or by asserting that she is the smartest person in the room."

So will this understated executive, heretofore an "invisible heir," be able to push Fidelity back on the right path? There will be challenges, according to James Lowell III, editor of the independent newsletter Fidelity Investor, who spoke with Bloomberg Businessweek.

"Where they have failed utterly is to attract inflows. That's where they are getting smoked by literally inferior products," he said, continuing, "With Abby Johnson at the helm, it's a perfect moment for Fidelity to revitalize its image."

See the full profile here. 

Edited by: Chris Cumming


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