Vanguard Group
 |
|
| Privately held company | |
| Industry | Investment management |
| Founded | May 1, 1975 |
| Founder | John C. Bogle |
| Headquarters | Malvern, Pennsylvania |
|
Key people
|
F. William McNabb III (Chairman) Mortimer J. (Tim) Buckley (CEO as of January 2018) |
| Products |
Mutual funds Exchange-traded funds Brokerage Asset management |
| AUM |
 $4 trillion (2017) |
| Total assets |
$1.860 trillion (2017) |
|
Number of employees
|
More than 15,000 (2017) |
| Website | vanguard.com |
The Vanguard Group is an American investment management company based in Malvern, Pennsylvania with over $4 trillion in assets under management. It is the largest provider of mutual funds and the second-largest provider of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the world after BlackRock's iShares. In addition to mutual funds and ETFs, Vanguard offers brokerage services, variable and fixed annuities, educational account services, financial planning, asset management, and trust services.
Founder and former chairman John C. Bogle is credited with the creation of the first index fund available to individual investors and has been a proponent of and a major enabler of low-cost investing by individuals. Vanguard is structured as a mutual company; it is owned by funds managed by the company, and is therefore owned by its customers. Vanguard offers two classes of most of its funds: investor shares and admiral shares. Admiral shares have slightly lower expense ratios but require a higher minimum investment.
In 1951, for his undergraduate thesis at Princeton University, John C. Bogle conducted a study in which he found that most mutual funds did not earn any more money than if they invested in S&P 500 . Even if the stocks in the funds beat the benchmark index, management fees reduced the returns to investors below the returns of the benchmark.
Immediately after graduating from Princeton University in 1951, Bogle was hired by Wellington Management Company. In 1966, he forged a merger with a fund management group based in Boston. He became President in 1967 and CEO in 1970. However, the merger ended badly and Bogle was therefore fired in 1974. Bogle has said about being fired: "The great thing about that mistake, which was shameful and inexcusable and a reflection of immaturity and confidence beyond what the facts justified, was that I learned a lot. And if I had not been fired then, there would not have been a Vanguard."
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Wikipedia