Deals & People February 29, 2024

Vanguard CEO Buckley to Step Down This Year

The asset manager’s board will commence a search among internal and external candidates, while CIO Greg Davis has added the ‘president’ title.

Reported by

The Vanguard Group’s chairman and CEO, Tim Buckley, will step down at the end of 2024, the Valley Forge, Pennsylvania-based firm announced Thursday.

Buckley will retire from his roles after helming the firm for six years and overseeing its continued leading position among asset managers, in part due to the strength of its passive investment strategies. Vanguard currently sits as the second-largest asset manager in defined-contribution-only investments at $1.61 trillion, behind BlackRock Inc.’s $1.16 trillion assets under management, according to PLANADVISER’s 2023 DCIO benchmarking survey.

For more stories like this, sign up for the PLANADVISERdash daily newsletter.

Tim Buckley

Vanguard’s board of directors has started a search of both internal and external candidates to replace Buckley, who was with the firm for a total of 33 years. The firm also announced that Chief Investment Officer Greg Davis has been appointed to the additional role of president of the firm, effective immediately.

Vanguard noted that, under Buckley, the firm expanded its client base by “tens of millions to more than 50 million investors globally” and grew total AUM by more than 80% to $9 trillion. Buckley also oversaw an expansion of advice offerings, digitization of the client experience and expansion of investment products outside of the U.S. to the Europe, Australia, Canada and Latin America.

Buckley joined Vanguard in 1991 as Founder John Bogle’s research assistant. In 2001, he became a member of Vanguard’s senior leadership team as head of the information technology group. He later led the personal investor division and then served as CIO before being named CEO in 2018. He was named chairman in 2019.

“Thirty-three years ago, I was lucky to join a company that believed in giving investors a fair shake as they saved for retirement, for their kids’ college education or for their dream home,” Buckley said in a statement. “In my seventh year as CEO, we have scaled our mission to more than 50 million investors, and our team is just getting started. I have been passionate about developing the next generation of leaders, and I look forward to those leaders elevating Vanguard to new heights.”

Greg Davis

Current CIO Davis will take on an expanded role as president, effective immediately. He will be responsible for Vanguard’s investment management, retirement business and services for financial adviser clients, overseeing the majority of Vanguard’s fund and exchanged-traded-fund distribution.

Davis is a 24-year veteran of the firm and was appointed CIO and global head of the investment management group in 2017. He oversees $8 trillion in global assets managed by Vanguard’s fixed income, equity index and quantitative equity groups.

 

Compliance February 29, 2024

William Birdthistle Leaves SEC Post, to Be Replaced by Natasha Vij Greiner

Birdthistle greatly influenced many proposals and rules affecting advisers, including the names rule and the predictive analytics proposal.

Reported by

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced on Wednesday that William Birdthistle, the director of the SEC’s Division of Investment Management, will leave the regulator. He will be replaced by Natasha Vij Greiner, currently the deputy director of the Division of Examinations, effective March 8.

The Division of Investment Management regulates investment advisers and companies, such as mutual funds and other products used by retail investors. Birdthistle first joined the SEC in December 2021.

Never miss a story — sign up for PLANADVISER newsletters to keep up on the latest retirement plan adviser news.

Birdthistle was known for his support of liquidity management reforms to money market funds and open-end funds, and he was an advocate for the swing pricing and hard close proposal which is still pending. He also advocated for the new SEC names rule, which reforms how funds named after a strategy, such as “value,” “growth” or “ESG” are regulated.

In addition, he helped write and pushed for the SEC’s proposals on cybersecurity, custody and predictive analytics, as well the finalized rules on marketing and private fund advisers.

Perhaps the most controversial proposal for which Birdthistle has advocated has been the predictive analytics proposal, which requires advisers to neutralize and eliminate conflicts related to a wide range of technologies. Birdthistle acknowledged in a House of Representatives committee hearing in July 2023 that the breadth of the covered technologies was a concern and invited commenters to recommend how to limit the definition.

Replacement Greiner has been “National Associate Director of the Investment Adviser/Investment Company (IA/IC) examination program, which includes the Private Funds Unit, and is the Associate Director of the Home Office IA/IC examination program,” according to the SEC, and has been with the SEC for 22 years in various roles, including acting chief counsel and assistant chief counsel in the Division of Trading and Markets.

Greiner earned a J.D. from the Catholic University of America and a B.S. from James Madison University.

The agency noted that Birdthistle will be returning to teaching; he had previously been a professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law.

«