Vanguard Group CEO Tim Buckley has been tapped to become the next chairman of the $5.3 trillion investment manager.
He will succeed Bill McNabb in January 2019 and become only the fourth chairman in the firm’s history, the company said in a statement on Thursday.
Buckley took over as CEO of Vanguard in January when McNabb left the position. Before becoming Vanguard’s top executive, he previously served as the firm’s chief investment officer, chief information officer, and led its Retail Investor Group. In 1991, when he joined Vanguard, Buckley was an assistant to then-CEO John Bogle.
As CEO, Buckley’s messages to financial advisors have echoed those of previous ones. In January at the Inside ETFs conference, he said advisors who don’t adapt to technological changes and fee compression will get left behind. Vanguard’s Personal Advisor Services said earlier this year its assets under management had topped $100 billion, putting it among the fastest growing of all the automatic investment platforms—though a large portion of those assets were simply shifted over from client accounts already held at Vanguard. But Buckley also said there’s still a future for advisors who “embrace the disruption.”
McNabb, 60, who took the CEO job in 2008, became chairman of the Pennsylvania company in 2009. Buckley said in a statement that McNabb was leaving Vanguard “deep in talent and ready to give our clients the best chance of investment success.”