Inside Vanguard: Leadership Secrets From the Company That Continues to Rewrite the Rules of the Investing Business

CAHPTER 4

AT WAR WITH WELLINGTON

Bogle and Riepe were on their way by train to a meeting of the Wellington mutual funds’ board of directors in New York City, armed with a brazen proposal that would, if accepted, convert the previous day’s painful personal defeat into a decisive victory. Bogle’s opponents—“my enemies”—were a majority of the board of directors of Wellington Management. But they were only a minority of the directors of the board of the several mutual fund boards comprising the Wellington Group of Funds.

The funds’ board had 11 fund directors: Bogle, Thorndike, Doran, and eight so-called independent or outside directors. Five of these had previously served as directors only of the Philadelphia fund boards and three had been directors ...