Fidelity's investment advisory group and brokerage unit recently made executive changes in its trading areas.  Fidelity Investments appointed Robert Minicus head of global equity trading for Fidelity Management & Research Co. (FMRCo), the investment advisor group for more than 500 mutual funds, with $1.6 trillion in assets under management.  He replaces Brian Conroy, who was promoted to president of Fidelity Capital Markets, the firm's brokerage arm.  Fidelity Capital Markets has more than 20 million institutional and retail investor customers.  Both Minicus and Conroy are based in Boston.

In doing so, the firm brings one former trader back to his brokerage roots, while a former bond veteran takes the equity trading helm on the investment side.  Sources say that the moves were made about two months ago, though the press releases only came out recently. 

        Robert Minicus ...  joined FMRCo in 2001 as a trader in the fixed income division in Merrimack, N.H.  He was elevated to head of international trading at FMRCo in early 2005.  Interestingly, Scott DeSano, who headed global equity trading at Fidelity Investments before Conroy, also came from the bond side at the firm.  After heading international, Minicus became a member of Conroy's management team.  Prior to joining Fidelity, he had worked as a trader at Salomon Bros. for 14 years.

        Brian Conroy ... who began as a block trader at Goldman Sachs, and later headed listed trading at JPMorgan, rejoins the sellside after spending about two decades on the buyside. He joined FMRCo in 2005.   Prior to Fidelity, Conroy was chief operating officer for Sigma Capital in New York. Before that, he worked as director of execution trading for SAC Capital and head of America's equity trading for ABN Amro.

In his role at the helm of global equity trading for FMRCo, Conroy also oversaw securities lending and foreign exchange for Fidelity mutual funds. During his time there, Conroy "designed a team-based approach that better integrated the analysis and trading functions to distill and connect insights," the firm reported.   [Traders Magazine, 3/25]