Highlights
Vanguard’s founder, John C. Bogle, has written several books offering financial advice. His latest, published in late 2008, is Enough: The True Measures of Money, Business and Life.
In 2008, BusinessWeek named Vanguard 33rd on its list of “Best Places to Launch a Career.”
Vanguard’s Primecap Core was named to Fortune’s “5 Funds for 2009” list.
Personal finance guru John C. Bogle founded Vanguard in 1975 with less than 30 employees, 11 funds, and $1.8 billion in assets. Vanguard was founded on Bogle’s conservative philosophy of long-term, low-cost, diversified investing, and the idea proved popular to both individual and institutional investors. Now Vanguard operates with almost $1 trillion in assets and 150 funds in the United States, plus additional funds around the world. It is the number two fund manager in the United States after Fidelity, and Bogle’s investment ideals have afforded it stability and low-key yet trustworthy reputation.
Vanguard offers a slew of services for investors of all types. It started with the Vanguard 500 Index Fund, an indexed mutual fund for individual investors that was the first of its kind. In 1982 the company started offering retirement services, and in 1986 it launched the Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund. In 1996, Vanguard added asset management and financial services planning to its repertoire. Today the company offers everything from college savings plans to tax assistance, and operates an online resource center for financial advisors.
The company also expresses a commitment to diversity and community involvement for its employees. In March 2009, Vanguard instituted a process to screen investments from companies that may be involved in human rights violations. This came after urging from a group called Investors Against Genocide, which wanted Vanguard to adopt its own screening standards. Vanguard refused, however, in the face of its own procedures and its trustees’ belief that the company wasn’t an ideal medium to address social change.