Alive and kicking

摘要

SCHUMPETER got a surprise on a recent visit to Boston to meet people at Fidelity, a family-controlled firm that is the world's fourth-largest asset manager and its industry's best-known brand. The company is not dying, or even in decline; the opposite, in fact. That is a shock because the conventional money-management business is thought to face annihilation from technological advance, along with other anachronisms such as shops, taxis, travel agents, car firms, watches, hotels and broadcast television.