The Vanguard Group

Walk into Vanguard's headquarters in Malvern, Pennsylvania, and you'll notice something odd for a firm managing more than $13 trillion: there's no plaque naming a founding family or a Wall Street parent. That's because the company belongs to its own customers. Vanguard is owned by the mutual funds it manages, and those funds are owned by the people invested in them. John C. Bogle built the place on that idea in 1975, and it still drives almost every decision the firm makes.

The origin story most people get wrong: Bogle didn't invent indexing. Rex Sinquefield had a similar product out a few years earlier. What Bogle did was drag the concept into the retail world at a price ordinary savers could stomach. The First Index Investment Trust opened in 1976 tracking the S&P 500, and it was a flop at first. Underwriters reportedly sold far less than hoped. Decades later that same fund, now the Vanguard 500 Index Fund, ranks among the biggest pools of money on earth.

Today Vanguard sits with BlackRock and State Street as one of the "Big Three" index managers, a group whose combined stakes make them permanent, unavoidable voices in corporate boardrooms. BlackRock usually wins the total-assets race thanks to iShares; Vanguard tends to lead in U.S. mutual fund assets. The firm employs around 20,000 people it calls crew members, serves over 50 million investors, and runs satellite offices in Charlotte, Dallas, Washington, D.C., and Scottsdale, plus operations in Canada, Australia, Asia, and Europe.

Salim Ramji took over as CEO, and his public sit-downs with Morningstar's Christine Benz have become a useful window into where the firm is headed. The product menu has stretched well past plain index funds: brokerage, 529 education accounts, financial planning, trust services, and a deep ETF shelf led by VOO, VTI, VXUS, VIG, and VUG. Most mutual funds still come in Investor and Admiral share classes, with Admiral shares charging less but demanding higher minimums, typically $3,000 to $100,000. The low-cost pitch hasn't changed in fifty years, and that's exactly the point. [edit]