Fidelity Delays Launch Of European Fund Supermarkets

by Carla Johnson, Investors Offshore.com

30 August 2001

Mutual fund management giant Fidelity recently announced that it would be delaying the launch of its planned German and French fund supermarkets due to systems delays and declining investor demand.

The German supermarket, originally mooted for March of this year, will not now open until some time in September, and the French version, also expected this year, will not be launched until 2002. Fidelity's UK online fund supermarket opened in the summer of last year, and now offers more than 500 funds from 36 providers.

Although UK customers are committing less to funds, according to research undertaken by the Association of Unit Trusts and Investment Funds, Fidelity insists that it is not overly concerned, and is merely exercising reasonable caution in its other European ventures. 'We don't launch supermarkets on the basis of sales quarter by quarter,' explained Paul Kafka, Executive Director of Corporate Communications.

Fund experts have suggested that the reason for the relatively slow development of mutual fund supermarkets in Europe is that investors are not as comfortable shopping online for mutual funds for their own retirement as they are in the United States. A preference for fixed income investments in some European countries has also slowed the take-up for equity mutual funds.

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