American Express Hires Three Fidelity Managers

American Express (AXP Quote)swiped a trio of stock pickers from fund titan Fidelity, giving its spotty fund lineup a booster shot and bucking the industry's firing trend.

AmEx, which offers its own family of funds under the AXP label, announced on Tuesday that it has hired Douglas Chase, Robert Ewing and Nick Thakore. The three managers formerly ran the Boston fund behemoth's (FEXPX Quote)Export & Multinational, (FBALX Quote)Balanced, and (FFIDX Quote)Fidelity funds, respectively. The trio, who managed more than $20 billion at Fidelity, will start a Boston office and manage $12 billion for their new bosses. The move comes amid a spate of manager firings at other firms and is part of AmEx's continuing effort to bolster its funds, most of which have trailed their average peer in recent years. Fidelity managers are often a hot commodity given the firm's pedigree.

"I think it probably is a sign that AmEx is pretty serious about revamping and improving its funds unit," says Scott Cooley, a senior fund analyst with Chicago research house Morningstar. "People are always out to hire away people from Fidelity because they have a pretty rigorous hiring and training regimen. I can remember someone at Fidelity saying Doug Chase was one of the best young managers they had." ...