New Magellan Manager Must Show Results Quickly

Bob Stansky, the new manager of Fidelity Investments’ $55 billion Magellan Fund, had better outperform the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index - and fast, said Michael Lipper, president of Lipper Analytical Services Inc.

“If the average growth fund is up by 10 percent, he will need to be up 12, 13, 14 percent,” Lipper told the Bloomberg Forum.

What if the 39-year-old Stansky fails to top the performance of the benchmark equity index on a consistent basis?

“I imagine he will be replaced,” said Lipper, who founded his company 23 years ago and is regarded as one of the deans of the $3-trillion mutual fund industry. “Fidelity is a performance-driven organization.”

Welcome to the cauldron known as the Fidelity Magellan fund, Mr. Stansky.

Lipper’s comments hint at the pressures faced by Stansky, a 13-year Fidelity veteran who made his name by managing the $7.5 billion Fidelity Growth Company Fund.

Lipper said Fidelity analysts would begin to look at Stansky’s performance at Magellan by the third quarter of this year.

Magellan’s 1996 performance ranks 637th of 648 growth stock funds tracked by Lipper.