John C. Bogle, 77, is Founder of The Vanguard Group, Inc., and President of Vanguard’s Bogle Financial Markets Research Center. He created Vanguard in 1974 and served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer until 1996 and Senior Chairman until 2000. He had been associated with a predecessor company since 1951, immediately following his graduation from Princeton University, magna cum laude in Economics. He is a graduate of Blair Academy, Class of 1947.The Vanguard Group is one of the two largest mutual fund organizations in the world. Headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, Vanguard comprises more than 100 mutual funds with current assets totaling about $950 billion. Vanguard 500 Index Fund, the largest fund in the group, was founded by Mr. Bogle in 1975. It was the first index mutual fund.
In 2004, TIME magazine named Mr. Bogle as one of the world’s 100 most powerful and influential people and Institutional Investor presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1999, FORTUNE designated him as one of the investment industry’s four “Giants of the 20th Century.” In the same year, he received the Woodrow Wilson Award from Princeton University for “distinguished achievement in the nation’s service.” In 1997, he was named one of the “Financial Leaders of the 20th Century” in Leadership in Financial Services (Macmillan Press Ltd., 1997).
In 1998, Mr. Bogle was presented the Award for Professional Excellence from the Association for Investment Management and Research, and in 1999 he was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Fixed Income Analysts Society, Inc. In 1993, he received the Philadelphia Investment Achievement Award from the Financial Analysts of Philadelphia.
Investors have purchased more than 500,000 copies of Mr. Bogle’s books. His first book, Bogle on Mutual Funds: New Perspectives/or the Intelligent Investor (Irwin Professional Publishing, 1993), has been a best-selling investment book since publication. Irwin is also the publisher of John Bogle and the Vanguard Experiment: One Man’s Quest to Transform the Mutual Fund Industry, by Robert Slater (1996). Mr. Bogle’s second book, Common Sense on Mutual Funds: New Imperatives for the Intelligent Investor (John Wiley & Sons, 1999), is also a best-seller, and his third book, John Bogle on Investing: The First 50 Years (McGraw-Hill, 2000), has also met with critical acclaim. His fourth book, Character Counts: The Creation and Building of The Vanguard Group (McGraw-Hill), was published in 2002. His fifth book, The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism (Yale University Press), was published in 2005.
Mr. Bogle served as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Investment Company Institute in 1969-1970, and as a member of the Board from 1969-1974. In 1997, he was appointed by then-U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt to serve on the Independence Standards Board. In 2000, he was named by the Commonwealth’s Chamber of Commerce as Pennsylvania’s Business Leader of the Year.
He has served as Chairman of the Board of the National Constitution Center since September 1999, and is a Director of Instinct Corporation, a member of The Conference Board’s Commission on Public Trust and Private Enterprise, and a member of the American Philosophical Society. A Trustee of Blair Academy, he served as Chairman from 1986-2001. He also serves on the Investment Committee of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He has received honorary doctorate degrees from Princeton University, University of Delaware, University of Rochester, New School University, Susquehanna University, Eastern University, Widener University, Albright College, Pennsylvania State University, and Drexel University.
Mr. Bogle was born in Montclair, New Jersey, on May 8, 1929. He now resides in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Eve. They are the parents of six children and the grandparents of twelve.