Fidelity chief still in charge at 80

At a conference Fidelity hosted for financial advisers at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Fla., last month, Johnson was in constant motion, attending speeches, playing tennis for hours, and chatting with clients until late into the night at a poolside reception.

“He’s wonderful,’’ said Peter J. Raimondi, president of Banyan Partners, an investment management firm in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., who struck up a conversation with Johnson at a breakfast event. “He’s extremely approachable.’’

At work and play, the lanky Johnson seems as vigorous as ever. He still travels the world for Fidelity, a financial services giant that manages $1.4 trillion for clients worldwide and has 37,000 employees. He works out at the gym in Boston’s Seaport Hotel, which a Fidelity affiliate owns. And he pursues other passions, ranging from collecting Asian antiques to helicopter skiing in Utah.

For years Fidelity watchers have been wondering when Johnson might step down, handing the reins to his daughter, Abigail, and keeping the business that his father started in 1946 in the family. But Johnson has shown no signs he plans to pass the torch anytime soon. And several current and former colleagues said they can’t imagine he’ll ever stop working, even if he eventually decides to give up the CEO title and remain chairman.

“He’ll never retire,’’ predicted longtime Fidelity executive James C. Curvey, now vice chairman of Fidelity’s parent company, FMR LLC.

Johnson is among a cohort of octogenarian businessmen who have eschewed retirement, the vanguard of an older generation of Americans who are living longer, healthier, and more active lives.

Berkshire Hathaway chief executive Warren Buffett turns 80 in August. Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone turned 87 last month, while financier T. Boone Pickens had his 82d birthday in May. News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch joins the club in March.

Company spokeswoman Anne Crowley said Johnson remains “very actively engaged in running the company every day. It’s what he finds challenging and exciting. Why would he step away from that?’’

Johnson embodies the Japanese philosophy of kaizen, or continuous improvement, that he has infused into Fidelity for decades. Curvey said he never seems to tire of tinkering with Fidelity, replacing a steady stream of executives over the years and rejiggering the company’s structure from time to time.

“It’s part of the DNA,’’ said Curvey, FMR vice chairman.

Just last month, Johnson tapped an outsider, Bank of New York Mellon Corp. executive Ronald P. O’Hanley, to run Fidelity’s famed money management business, including its flagship mutual funds. And his daughter, Abigail, extended her oversight over Fidelity’s vast distribution business, including the discount brokerage business and its massive task of administering retirement benefits and other employee perks for millions of workers.

Colleagues said Johnson delves into the minor details of projects that catch his interest — from the massive computer systems that handle customer orders to ordering the sinks replaced at the Seaport Hotel.

Former Fidelity executive Robert Pozen, now chairman of rival MFS Investment Management, recalled that Johnson loved debating decisions with colleagues and always seemed to be working. When Fidelity’s US offices would close for Thanksgiving, Pozen remembered Johnson heading to Fidelity’s offices in the British territory of Bermuda.

Yet Johnson, who lives in Beacon Hill and maintains additional homes including ones in Nahant and Maine, prefers to avoid the public eye. It’s been years since he granted a formal interview to the media, and he declined to be interviewed for this story.

“It’s almost like guessing what’s going on inside the Vatican or the Kremlin in the days of the old Soviet Union,’’ said Christopher Davis, a mutual fund analyst at Morningstar Inc. in Chicago.

The Johnson family owns 49 percent of the voting stock in Fidelity, with selected employees owning the rest. Forbes magazine estimated last year that Johnson and his daughter were worth a combined $20 billion.

Johnson remains equally passionate and involved with his personal interests, such as funding art collections and research into Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s, a progressive and fatal brain disease, is especially close to Johnson’s heart because it took his father’s life in 1984. Over the past three decades, Johnson and his related foundations have given millions to fund research. And last year, Fidelity’s Charitable Gift Fund was one of the main backers of the Alzheimer’s Project, an educational endeavor that included a four-part HBO documentary series, supplemental films, a website, and an outreach campaign.

“Ned probably knows as much Alzheimer’s as many doctors,’’ said Pozen, the former Fidelity executive.

Johnson also quietly launched his own nonprofit, the Alzheimer’s Research Forum Foundation, which acts as an online clearinghouse of information for researchers and is based at Fidelity’s headquarters.

“It seems to be one of the best places in the field,’’ said Walter Kukull, a University of Washington epidemiology professor and director of the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center in Seattle.

Like many others in the field, Kukull had no idea that Johnson or Fidelity was behind the Alzheimer’s Research Forum. Its website simply notes the Alzheimer’s Research Forum is funded by an anonymous foundation. Public records show it was started as a pilot project by a Fidelity foundation. Nearly all its funding comes from a Johnson foundation and the board members have Fidelity ties.

Johnson is also passionate about art, lining his office with Asian and American antiques. Pozen joked that he once persuaded Johnson to make a business trip to Washington, D.C., by mentioning it would provide an opportunity to visit a new Asian art display there. Johnson has given millions of dollars to museums, including the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

He has also launched the Brookfield Arts Foundation, which was chartered largely to acquire antique American and Asian furniture and decorative arts and, in turn, lend them to museums and historical associations for public viewing.

The foundation purchased an antique tobacco box and financed the restoration of an 18th-century Chinese merchant’s house, the Yin Yu Tang project, that is on display at the Peabody Essex. It has also donated art, including an early Ming blue-and-white basin to the Peabody Essex. As of 2008, the most recent year available, the Brookfield foundation had $100 million in assets, including more than $82 million in antiques.

At the conference in Naples that Fidelity hosted last month, Raimondi, the financial adviser, marveled at how interested Johnson was in talking to clients, despite being atop the world’s largest mutual fund company. Raimondi recalled that after introducing himself, Johnson asked him what he does, how Fidelity could help him, and what it could do better. More than that, Johnson seemed to pay close attention to what he said.

“He will look you in the eye, shake your hand, and ask you questions the first time you meet him,’’ said Raimondi. “He was genuinely interested in the answer, and I took that to heart.’’

Todd Wallack can be reached at twallack@globe.com.