Edward Johnson III
American investor and businessperson (1930–2022)
Edward Crosby "Ned" Johnson III (June 29, 1930 – March 23, 2022) was an American businessman. In 2019, his net worth was estimated at US$8.2 billion.
Early life
Johnson was born in Milton, Massachusetts, the son of Elsie Livingston Johnson and Edward C. Johnson II. He attended prep school at Milton Academy before transferring to Tabor Academy, and graduated with a bachelor of arts and sciences degree from Harvard College in 1954.
Career
Following service in the United States Army, Johnson became a research analyst at Fidelity Investments in 1957, the company founded by his father in 1949. He later became the portfolio manager for the Fidelity Trend Fund in 1960, and ran the famous Fidelity Magellan Fund from 1963 to 1977. He then became president of the company in 1972, and chairman and CEO in 1977.
Johnson was the first to begin the practice of permitting check writing on money market funds. He was also the first to sell discount brokerage services to banks, insurance companies, and consumers. He supported and invested in automation of brokerage sales and operations.
In a November 2016, memo to Fidelity employees, Johnson announced he would retire in December and turn over the chairmanship to his daughter Abigail.
“Edward Johnson III” enters the record as american investor and businessperson (1930–2022). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Edward, Johnson and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q382502. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1930, 2022, 2019 and 1954.
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This entry incorporates text from “Edward Johnson III” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.