Fidelity Investments, the nation’s largest recordkeeper, said Tuesday that it was reviewing its relationship with money manager Ken Fisher, according to Reuters, and Philadelphia’s board of pensions said it terminated its business with Fisher after he allegedly made what attendees considered offensive remarks about women at a conference last week.
“We are very concerned about the highly inappropriate comments by Kenneth Fisher. The views he expressed do not align in any way with our company’s values,” Fidelity spokesman Vincent Loporchio told the news service. “We do not tolerate these types of comments at our company.”
Philadelphia’s retirement system had roughly $54 million under management with Fisher, Reuters added.
The state of Michigan said last week that it will divest $600 million of its pension fund from the firm. Fisher has also been banned from future Tiburon CEO Summits, where the remarks we made, and his firm will start a diversity task force in the wake of the controversy.
CEO Summit Response
Charles (Chip) Roame, Managing Partner of Tiburon Strategic Advisors and the Summit’s host, released a statement on Thursday that totaled nearly 1,300 words and commended Lake Avenue Financial CEO Alex Chalekian, “for having the strength to go public Tuesday night with his views of offensive behavior.”
Chalekian broke the Summit’s off-the-record protocol to tweet a video in which he described Fisher’s “fireside chat” interview with Roame as a “true debacle.”
“It was horrible. Things that were said by Ken Fisher were just absolutely horrifying,” Chalekian alleged. “He made comments about genitalia, he talked about picking up on a girl and ‘don’t show them what’s in your pants.’”
“We all choose our ways to deal with bad behavior,” Roame said in his statement, but did not refer to Fisher by name. “The recent situation that arose at Tiburon has been dealt with firmly. I believe that I clearly repudiated the comments and apologized to all the attendees. I further barred the speaker from ever attending again.”
With more than 20 years serving financial markets, John Sullivan is the former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine and retirement editor of ThinkAdvisor.com. Sullivan is also the former editor of Boomer Market Advisor and Bank Advisor magazines, and has a background in the insurance and investment industries in addition to his journalism roots.
