By Suzanne McGee and Svea Herbst-Bayliss

BOSTON, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Will Danoff, whose skill at picking stocks paid for millions of Americans' college education and retirement, will end his 35-year long run as lead manager of the Fidelity Contrafund at the end of the year, the Boston-based company said on Tuesday.

The 65-year-old lead manager of the $176.3 billion Fidelity Contrafund FCNTX.O, will retire as of the end of 2026, ceding the stockpicking role to recently named co-managers Jason Weiner and Asher Anolic but remaining with Fidelity Investments as an advisor, the asset management firm confirmed Tuesday.

Contrafund is one of Fidelity's flagship mutual funds. Under Danoff's management since 1990, it emerged as one of the asset manager's largest, with more than $360 billion in assets in the fund and related strategies, and one of its most successful. Over Danoff's tenure, investors earned a cumulative return of 10,423%, more than double the 4,300% generated by the Standard & Poor's 500 index .SPX over the same period, according to data from Morningstar.

"Danoff has been one of the most influential fund managers of the last several decades, and one of the last of the star solo managers," said Robby Greengold, a Morningstar analyst who tracks Contrafund. Asset managers increasingly are opting to create management teams rather than risking having a single star manage flagship products like Contrafund, Greengold said.

"What really stands out isn't just his absolute performance, but his ability to beat increasingly difficult benchmarks over the last five years," he added.

Danoff steered Contrafund into many of the biggest winners of the current bull market, including most of the "Magnificent 7" companies. As of the end of 2025, 21.8% of the fund's assets were invested in only two of those holdings: Meta META.O and Nvidia NVDA.O.

Fidelity named Weiner and Anolic co-managers of Contrafund last year, setting the stage for the transition. Both are veterans of the firm.

In a statement from Fidelity, Danoff said his successors "have had fun working closely together for decades, and they have embraced the Contrafund investment approach." He did not return calls seeking additional comment.

Commenting on Danoff's pending retirement, Bart Grenier, head of asset management at Fidelity, said in a statement that he "demonstrated resilience in navigating some of the most complex and volatile market environments over four decades."

Danoff, one of a handful of portfolio managers who acquired a high profile among the investing public as well as on Wall Street, remained a low-key figure, say two former college classmates.

He continued to use a canvas bag with his surname scrawled on it magic marker to tote documents to and from meetings and declined to share professional or personal accomplishments for the 25th reunion of his 1982 Harvard graduating class.

His low profile extends to social media: in contrast to many peers, he has no LinkedIn profile. He and his wife, Ami Kuan Danoff, have been notable philanthropists, contributing to Harvard and also funding a new life sciences building and residence hall at Brown University.

(Suzanne McGee in Providence, Rhode Island, additional reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

((Suzanne.McGee@thomsonreuters.com))