One of Fidelity's [profile] innovations, fund veterans have said, is its creation of a system to put a dollar value on the column inches its PMs create in newspapers and other media. If that system is still in place, the recent Facebook IPO could be causing Fidelity's accounts to break out the red ink.

Fidelity may be blameless when it comes to the Facebook flop, but that is not stopping the Boston Behemoth from seeing some bad press.

Reuters mutual fund beat reporter Jessica Toonkel relies on an unnamed "source familiar with the situation" to report that Fidelity is working with "thousands" of brokerage clients hit by the snafus in the week old IPO.

A Fidelity spokesman did address the issue to Reuters:

"On behalf of our customers, Fidelity's senior management has been working with the regulators, market makers and NASDAQ to represent all of our customer's trading issues from May 18, and we will continue to do so until we are confident that NASDAQ has done everything it can to mitigate the impact to our customers."

The article notes that Fidelity is "a mutual fund company that also runs a large brokerage."

It also points out that Fidelity has been keeping clients informed about what is happening.

None of that is stopping the New York Post from documenting the travails of an eleven-year-old Fidelity brokerage client who bet $10,000 on Facebook's shares and is now sitting on a 25 percent loss. The Upper East Side fifth grader also wants out.

"They are holding my money hostage," Sam Lesser tells the paper. The Post adds that "Lesser and his mom are still haggling with officials at their local Fidelity Investments." 

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