Vanguard's Jack Bogle Embraced Good Governance: The mutual fund giant's founder devoted his life to the value of wise oversight in investing and in the boardroom.

AuthorKristie, James
PositionENDNOTE

When he died Jan. 16 at the age of 89, John C. Bogle, the founder and longtime leader of The Vanguard Group investment company, was fulsomely hailed as the champion of the small investor.

He dedicated his life to a philosophy and set of practices to minimize the costs of investing in the financial markets. He was also remembered as the scourge ofWall Street. He constantly harped about greed and predatory actions by those who preyed upon the investor community with what Bogle saw as outsized fees for money management.

But Directors & Boards readers also got to know Bogle as a champion of corporate governance.

While the magazine published his perspective on the financial markets several times, Bogle and I got to know each other over the tenures of both my editorship of Directors & Boards (1981-2017) and his leadership of Vanguard Group (from 1974, when he founded the company, until 1996 when he stepped down as CEO, and then into present day, when he became an important voice about investment matters with his books and articles and on the speaking circuit). We recognized each other as simpatico spirits in believing how crucial wise oversight is to the corporate world.

It was particularly in 2001 that we drew Bogle out on corporate board leadership. I developed the 25th anniversary edition of Directors & Boards with the theme, "An Oral History of Corporate Governance." (https://www. directorsandboards.com/ articles/singlejohn-bogle)

I turned to Bogle as one of my historians, interviewing him, perhaps more extensively than anyone had up to that time, on the past, present and future of boards. Here is a snippet from the resulting article:

Bogle remembered that corporate governance "actually was quite actively debated in 1951 when

I began my career." In his senior thesis on graduating from Princeton University as an economics major, "I did write about the role of mutual funds in corporate governance," he said, while acknowledging that there were "virtually no examples of mutual fund activism."

Bogle outlined his recommended process on recruiting strong board members. "I was never particularly...

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