Fidelity decision to close private equity unit first covered by Reuters

Reuters beat Bloomberg by 27 minutes on June 19 in reporting that hyper secretive mutual fund industry giant Fidelity Investments, which had been branching out into other investment classes, is shutting down its two-year-old private equity unit. Dow Jones did not report the news. The news was of interest to investment bankers who were notified that yet another player was exiting the once lucrative private equity arena and for investors more generally who got a rare glimpse at Fidelity’s business strategy, one of the most closely guarded gameplans in the $10 trillion mutual fund industry. The news was picked up on a large number of industry Web sites including offroadcapital and realfinance.info.