Charles R. Schwab

Charles Robert Schwab Sr., born on 29 July 1937, is an American investor and financial executive who founded the Charles Schwab Corporation and remains its chairman. He was born in Sacramento, grew up in Woodland and Santa Barbara, California, and studied economics at Stanford University before taking an MBA at its Graduate School of Business in 1961. His firm began in the 1960s as an investment newsletter and small brokerage. After the United States securities regulator deregulated commissions in 1975, he halved customer charges, paid salespeople salaries instead of commissions and added toll-free order taking, which made the company by far the largest discount securities dealer in the country. He sold the firm to Bank of America in 1981, bought it back in 1987 and took it public, returned as chief executive in 2004, and stepped down from that post in 2008 while keeping the chairmanship.