Vanguard Group

The Vanguard Group has quietly started a network that will allow small investors to trade mutual funds from nine of its competitors and to have all those holdings listed on their Vanguard statements. Other companies, including Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab & Co., have offered such programs for several years, and Vanguard last week began introducing its version in response to requests from customers of its brokerage service, said John J. Brennan, president of the Malvern- headquartered company.

Vanguard Group Inc. unveiled its plans for a 213-acre office campus complex before the Tredyffrin Township supervisors Monday night and received a generally favorable response. The supervisors heard more than two hours of testimony during a public hearing on the proposed office complex in the western part of the township near Cedar Hollow and Matthews Roads, south of Route 202 and east of the National Rolling Mills Inc. The financial-services company's plan will be on tonight's agenda of the Township Planning Commission.

Liberty All-Star Equity Fund, a closed-end investment company, yesterday said its trustees had unanimously rejected sweeping changes suggested by John C. Bogle, a Liberty shareholder and chairman of the Vanguard Group of Investment Cos. of Valley Forge. In a statement, the board said Bogle's proposals were "inconsistent with the fundamental premises on which All-Star was structured . . . and were not in the best interests of the fund's shareholders. " In unsolicited proposals, Bogle asked that the fund's shareholders vote on converting the company to an open-end fund.

After the recent death of John T. Jackson, Vanguard Group in Malvern wrote to its employees about his significance to the firm. "Mr. Jackson joined the Wellington Management board in 1971. "After the Wellington Management board fired Jack Bogle as chief executive in 1974, Mr. Jackson was one of the independent directors of the Wellington mutual funds who voted to create a management company that would be owned by the funds and headed by Mr. Bogle. "That management company . . . is Vanguard, which began operations on May 1, 1975.

Vanguard Group introduced a new mutual fund yesterday to be managed by one of its hottest outside investment firms. The manager, Primecap Management Co., quietly introduced three funds of its own last month, although Vanguard had closed two Primecap funds to new investors in March. Vanguard routinely closes hot funds to avoid hobbling managers with a flood of cash that cannot be invested wisely. (Yesterday, the fund family closed the $5.3 billion Vanguard Energy fund to new investors.

Cited for its hot economy, low unemployment and innovative approaches to public / private partnerships, Chester County has been named community of the year by the state Chamber of Business and Industry. "What has happened in Chester County is significant for the business climate, especially the whole way the public and private sectors have worked together to bring about a positive climate for change," said Lew Ebert, vice president of marketing for the state chamber. Commissioner Colin Hanna said the award validates what most people already know.

Local environmental groups have challenged Vanguard Group's building expansion plans, claiming they will lead to stormwater pollution of the Valley Creek watershed. Attorneys for the Valley Creek Coalition, made up of eight environmental and wildlife protection organizations, filed an appeal yesterday with the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board, challenging the stormwater management permit the State Department of Environmental Protection has given Vanguard. The permit, issued late last month, was granted for the expansion of the mutual fund company's corporate campus on Cedar Hollow Road.

In the view south from the windows of State Sen. Jim Gerlach's office sit a scattering of sleepy shops and open green fields. But these days, Gerlach's sights are focused beyond those fields, down Black Horse Hill to the townships of Uwchlan and Upper Uwchlan. It is there, he says, that the first substantial application of two recently passed land-use laws will be put to the test. The legislation, known as Senate Bill 300 and House Bill 14, was signed into law June 22. Gerlach, a Republican who represents the 44th District, introduced the Senate bill and has spent much of his 10 year career in state politics working on pushing it through the state legislature, he said.

Coming soon to your television or personal computer screen: Vanguard employees to help you make financial decisions. The Vanguard Group's managing director for information technology, Bob DiStefano, said he envisions a future in which shareholders get help by clicking on a remote control or a mouse to talk directly to a Vanguard employee about how to save for retirement, a child's education, or any other financial goal. Adding that kind of service will take several years, he said, but the idea shows how tightly the mutual fund giant in Malvern is embracing technology as a strategy to offer new services at low cost.

Fidelity Investments isn't shy about naming Vanguard Group as the target of its recent price cuts. The Boston fund family slashed fees last month on its index mutual funds, underpricing Vanguard's flagship Standard & Poor's 500 index fund by 40 percent. "We have a lot of customers who overlap with a large mutual-fund complex located near you," Jeff Carney, president of Fidelity Personal Investments, said in an interview. Vanguard, now the nation's biggest company for long-term mutual funds, is based in Malvern.

Vanguard Group has ended one 24-year effort to outguess the stock and bond markets. Malvern-based Vanguard's Asset Allocation Fund , founded in 1988 after a stock market collapse briefly spooked investors, was designed to let managers shuttle clients' money between S&P 500 stocks, U.S. Treasurys, and money-market funds - whichever the advisers thought was likely to pay best in the near future. On Friday, the fund, managed by Mellon Capital Management Corp. , was folded into Vanguard's Balanced Index Fund , which offers a fixed asset mix of 60 percent stocks/40 percent bonds, designed to rise and fall with the markets.

As the economy struggles in recovery, more working Americans are making dicey moves to pluck cash from their 401(k) retirement accounts. A record one in five employees sitting on these popular nest eggs had borrowed from accounts at the end of 2009. Recent reports show that number has continued to climb. The money helps families cope with high-cost credit card debt and medical bills, fund educations and improve or buy homes. Borrowing it, however, also can set personal finance traps.

Fisker Automotive says it is planning to hire 120 engineers, technicians, and production workers, starting this weekend, at the former General Motors plant it is rebuilding west of Wilmington so it can start building electric-hybrid sedans there by the end of 2012. After the hires this summer and fall, "there will be a continuous addition of jobs" until the plant starts producing $48,000 Nina sedans late next year, Fisker said Wednesday. The California company didn't respond to questions about whether it will give preference to laid-off General Motors workers, who packed the plant with their United Auto Workers union leaders when Vice President Biden , who lives nearby, announced a half-billion dollars in government loans to fund Fisker in late 2009.

Vanguard Group said today it started an actively managed stock mutual fund that will invest in emerging markets. The Emerging Markets Select Stock Fund will use four investment advisory firms and have an expense ratio of 0.95 percent ($9.50 per $1,000 invested) compared with an average of 1.68 percent for similar emerging market funds, the Malvern company said. The fund's two-week subscription period for investments will end on June 27.    -Paul Schweizer

The 30,674 employees in the Philadelphia area who participated in this year's survey were asked to rate their company's chief executive officer in response to this prompt: I have confidence in the leader of this organization. The bosses with the highest scores among large, medium and small companies are our winners. Bill McNabb, chairman and chief executive officer, The Vanguard Group Top leader, large companies Vanguard, based in Valley Forge, has about 9,200 employees in the Philadelphia area, out of about 12,700 globally.

After the recent death of John T. Jackson, Vanguard Group in Malvern wrote to its employees about his significance to the firm. "Mr. Jackson joined the Wellington Management board in 1971. "After the Wellington Management board fired Jack Bogle as chief executive in 1974, Mr. Jackson was one of the independent directors of the Wellington mutual funds who voted to create a management company that would be owned by the funds and headed by Mr. Bogle. "That management company . . . is Vanguard, which began operations on May 1, 1975.

In the Region Arkema moves U.S. base Philadelphia chemicals- and materials-maker Arkema Inc. is moving its U.S. headquarters from 2000 Market St. to its technical center at King of Prussia. The 131,325-square-foot Center City space on Floors 22 to 26 is up for sublease, starting July 1, 2011, at $19 a square foot plus electric, and will run to 2015. Spokesman Jim Bell said the technical center has 212 employees. - Alan J. Heavens OTC medicines may be delayed McNeil Consumer Healthcare may be off the market till next year with infants' or children's versions of four over-the- counter medications it produces at its Fort Washington facility.

The family of an elderly Bucks County man is suing two of the region's largest financial institutions, saying their lack of vigilance helped enable Bonnie Sweeten to illegally plunder the man's retirement savings. Meanwhile, three lawyers have confirmed that a federal grand jury is investigating Sweeten, the suburban mother who last year faked her abduction, stole a coworker's identification, and fled with her 9-year-old daughter to Disney World. The probe is believed to include allegations of a $280,000 theft from Victor Biondino, 92, of Oakford, the alleged victim in the lawsuit filed last week in Bucks County Court.

His wife had tried to dissuade him. He was 79 years old, and lately his health had been shaky, complications involving his heart transplant of a dozen years ago. Why subject himself to the stress? At the airport the day before, while waiting for the 7:30 a.m. flight from Philadelphia to the West Coast, even he had exclaimed, "This is madness!" But John Clifton Bogle - "Please, just call me Jack" - doesn't trifle with commitments. The founder and former chairman of Vanguard Group Inc., the mutual-fund giant headquartered in Malvern, had attended every reunion of the Boglehead Diehards, disciples brought together by the Internet, since their first gathering in Miami in 2000, and he wasn't about to miss this one, even if it meant traveling to San Diego.