Vanguard Group, Inc.

Vanguard Group, Inc. is an American investment management company headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, one of the largest asset managers in the world. It was founded in 1975 by John C. Bogle, who structured the company so that it is owned by its own funds, which are in turn owned by the funds' own shareholders, a mutual ownership structure Bogle designed specifically to keep costs low for investors. Vanguard launched the first index mutual fund available to individual investors in 1976, a product widely credited with popularizing low-cost passive index investing, and the company has since built one of the largest ranges of index mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in the industry.