Rossi had been (CIO) and director at Gartmore. Prior to that he was at Threadneedle Asset Management, responsible for Latin American and global equities.
At Fidelity, Rossi will report to Robert Higginbotham, chief executive and president, Europe. He will be responsible for Fidelity's equity investment capabilities, including portfolio management, research, derivatives, trading and corporate finance.
Higginbotham said: "Dominic combines a passion for investing with an appreciation of our way of investing. I am delighted that he will be bringing these qualities to Fidelity."
Looking at Financial Express data, 33 Fidelity equity funds have returned an average of 5.09 per cent over three years to 5 November. The top performer in that list was the Fidelity Institutional South East Asia, which returned 41.07 per cent.
Some 19 Gartmore equity funds averaged a negative return of -4.12 per cent over the same period. The top performer in its list was the Gartmore Pacific Opportunities, fund, which returned 15.07 per cent.
Top performing equity funds, over 3-yrs
Source: Financial Express Analytics
Meanwhile, Gartmore has also announced the results of its own Strategic Review into the future of the business. This is intended to free up £10m in annual savings, as well as see new equity representing up to 15 per cent of the company's existing issued share capital made available to incentivise key employees.
However, also announced is the departure of Roger Guy, head of Gartmore's European large cap fund management team, which oversees some £3.5bn of assets under management (AUM). The decision may be seen as another challenge for the asset manager because Guy, who manages the Gartmore European Absolute Return fund, has tended to outperform peers over time. Financial Express data shows that he has outperformed peers in five out of seven years of rising markets, and three out of three years in falling markets.
The data also shows he has managed to perform better with less risk than his peers.
Guy's departure will see Gartmore's European large cap and all cap teams merged into a single European equities team, overseen by John Bennett. The transition of Guy's responsibilities is expected to be completed by the New Year, although he will remain on a consultancy basis until May 2011.
Gartmore is making no changes to its managers responsible for UK, global, emerging markets, Japanese, fixed income, fund of funds and US investment capabilities.
Update - SIG terminates €38m mandate
Following the news that Roger Guy is to depart Gartmore, Skandia Investment Group (SIG) announced it is terminating its 10-stock €38m mandate run by Roger Guy within its €325m Skandia European Best Ideas fund.
SIG will immediately allocate the monies equally to the remaining eight managers within the fund and will consider adding further managers from its ‘reserve bench’ in due course.
James Millard, chief investment officer of SIG said: “The fund remains well diversified and well positioned to continue its strong performance, which puts it 10 per cent ahead of the MSCI Europe Index since launch.”
He added: “Within our other multi-manager funds, we currently have a further £150m invested across several mandates run by Gartmore which are not directly affected by the announcements today. We will continue to monitor the situation and will not hesitate to take appropriate action should we deem it necessary.”