After a jarringly sudden announcement of its CEO’s retirement, investment giant Vanguard has tapped its first outsider to serve as the firm’s fifth CEO. On July 8, Blackrock veteran Salim Ramji will take over, facing customer service challenges, uneasiness about whether an outsider will preserve the firm’s culture, and short-lived curiosity about whether he’d chart a new course for crypto. In March, even the closest Vanguard watchers were taken by surprise when the Malvern, PA-headquartered company announced that Tim Buckley would be retiring.

Most recently, Mr. Ramji was Global Head of iShares & Index Investing, where he was responsible for managing a majority of the firm’s client assets and evolving the iShares platform to provide an even broader set of innovative low-cost products for investors globally.

His contributions led to expanded investment access for tens of millions of investors, a more central role for ETFs in retirement and wealth portfolios and a more efficient bond market with ETFs as an enabling technology. At BlackRock, he led the implementation of a voting choice platform, which democratizes client access to the proxy voting process.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/after-sudden-ceo-departure-vanguard-taps-outsider-blackrock

 

It’s a small club and I’m not in it!