Skip to content
Wealth
The Big Take

Vanguard Stumbles In Pivot From Cult of Jack Bogle

For diehard fans of the company’s founder, what’s at stake is the very soul of the $8 trillion mutual-fund giant.

A statue of Vanguard founder Jack Bogle at the fund giant's headquarters in Malvern, Pennsylvania.
A statue of Vanguard founder Jack Bogle at the fund giant's headquarters in Malvern, Pennsylvania.

Photographer: Mark Makela/The New York Times/Redux

By

Jack Bogle is gone. But head west from Philadelphia, toward the leafy borough of Malvern, Pennsylvania, and turn onto the Vanguard Group campus. There’s old Jack, cast in bronze, surveying his singular creation: Vanguard, the mutual-fund giant that changed everything.

At Vanguard’s headquarters, 117 miles and a world away from Wall Street, Bogle’s figurative heirs are charting new paths for his quirky company, that great popularizer of low-cost index funds.