Masters in Business · Friday, September 4, 2026
Following the 2008 financial crisis, Vanguard, under Bill McNabb's leadership, strategically focused on expanding its role in the advisor channel and significantly investing in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). This period also saw Vanguard refine its core mission to 'take a stand for investors, treat them fairly, and give them the best chance for investment success,' a principle that guided the development of products like target-date funds.
“So we started to make moves around those changes. We knew the regulations were going to change a lot. And we also knew the competitive landscape. And frankly, we didn't get that all right. We knew somebody would end up with iShares because Barclays Bank was under such duress.”
“It was pretty cool. Yeah. So what's that tell you about ETFs and this advisor channel? And we took that back. And that's when we really went all in on ETFs and all in on really serving advisors better. And that was a huge change then.”
“So it really was, you know, we did this very existential exercise with Jim Collins, the great business writer. Mm-hmm. So we asked ourselves, in order to be great, we thought the first step was, what's our why? Why do we exist? And we had a mission statement, and it was very long and a lot of adjectives and adverbs. And we took a team and we mixed the team. It was a couple of senior people, but all the way down to the front lines. And we said, come back with why do we exist? Why do we have a right to exist? And it was really simple. It was take a stand for investors, treat them fairly, and give them the best chance for investment success.”