(Bloomberg) — The bet that Fidelity Investments made on retail investors who swarmed the stock market during the pandemic is paying off for Abigail Johnson and her family.
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The fortune of Fidelity’s chief executive officer jumped to $21.5 billion after the closely held fund manager reported Wednesday that revenue rose 15% last year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The family, which owns almost half the Boston-based company, is now worth $48 billion, an increase of $6.2 billion.
Fidelity and its competitors spent much of last year courting the flood of individual investors who entered the market during the pandemic as stocks and other risky assets soared in value, even creating a new type of brokerage account to give teenagers access to financial markets. The company said in August it would make 9,000 new hires across the U.S. by the end of 2021 amid a boom in retail trading.
An increase in the number of retail accounts helped push Fidelity’s discretionary assets to $4.5 trillion, up 18% from a year earlier, according to the firm’s annual report released Wednesday. Its revenue rose to $24 billion, up from $21 billion, with operating income of $8.1 billion.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index calculates that Fidelity is worth $74.8 billion, an increase of $12 billion, based on data in the report.
Susan Coburn, a spokeswoman for Fidelity, declined to comment.
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