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The term "not-for-profit" is almost meaningless here. They are not a charitable organization or advocating the social cause of "helping people invest". Vanguard
by opmac 8y ago
The term "not-for-profit" is almost meaningless here. They are not a charitable organization or advocating the social cause of "helping people invest". Vanguard makes profit. They probably make a crap-ton of profit. In fact, that's their main goal - to make as much money as possible. The caveat here is they don't have shareholders to report to, nor are they obligated to publicly report their financial statements. The top dogs at Vanguard probably make insane amounts of money all the while being "not-for-profit"... and nobody really knows because this stuff is private.
And I say this as a Vanguard customer for over a decade now, and I will probably continue to purchase funds from them for many reasons. But don't be fooled by thinking that they are doing some sort of public service by being "not-for-profit".
- TheHegemon 8y agoAll things considered Jack Bogle did not become rich from Vanguard. For the size of their fund they have almost no employees and are not exactly flush with cash. Vanguard is doing a sort of public service: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/stupidest-thing-can-money-rebroadcast/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/stupidest-thing-can-money-re...
- opmac 8y agoDidn't become rich? He said he's worth about $100 million. Maybe less than expected for the founder of $5 trillion investment firm, but he's most certainly "rich". Also, almost no employees? According to Wikipedia they have over 16k employees. And I don't know how you know their cash flow, considering they're privately held and that information is not out there, but their AUM is over $5 trillion so it's hard to believe they'd have any sort of cash flow issues.
- ASinclair 8y ago> The caveat here is they don't have shareholders to report to Sort of. The funds own Vanguard. So shareholders of those funds own Vanguard.
- mywittyname 8y agoBeing an executive at a not-for-profit organization is amazingly lucrative. Hell, being a mid-level personnel at one is pretty nice too. What you lose in salary you gain back in the form of massive bonuses.
- bradleyjg 8y agoPer wiki Jack Bogle has a net worth in the tens of millions of dollars. That’s not nothing, but Ned and Abigail Johnson (son and granddaughter of the founder of Fidelity) are together worth 24 billion dollars.