Vanguard Is Closer Than Ever to Ending BlackRock’s ETF Reign

Vanguard’s uninterrupted growth since 2002 is rooted in the Valley Forge, Pennsylvania-based company’s : Fund investors elect its board members, who typically funnel extra cash or assets generated by its products toward lowering fees. That setup has enabled Vanguard to charge clients next to nothing across its largely passive ETF lineup, sucking in hundreds of billions of dollars of inflows per year and fueling an almost-continuous fee war as issuers big and small slash costs to compete. As a result, Vanguard has attracted a following of mostly fee-conscious financial advisers and retail investors, who tend to steadily shovel in money amid virtually every market cycle and have boosted its US ETF assets to almost $2.3 trillion.