Vanguard Group has announced that Salim Ramji, formerly of BlackRock, will become its new CEO on July 8th. Ramji, who will also join the board of directors, will take over from Tim Buckley.
Until recently, Ramji was responsible for BlackRock’s exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and index investments divisions, where he managed to grow the ETF business from $1 trillion to $2.5 trillion.
Additionally, he was responsible for implementing BlackRock’s proxy voting platform, which provides customers with more influence over shareholder proposal votes through proxies.
The current CEO of Vanguard, Tim Buckley, will resign as director and chairman upon Ramji’s accession. This appointment quiets the rumors that Gregory Davis, the current CIO of Vanguard, was tipped to succeed Buckley.
Vanguard praises Ramji’s ability to make low-cost investment products more accessible to a broad audience. «His leadership has not only provided broader access to investments for millions of investors but also secured a prominent place for ETFs within pension and wealth portfolios and enhanced efficiency in the bond market,» said a spokesperson for Vanguard.
Before joining BlackRock, Ramji worked for 16 years at consulting firm McKinsey, where he held leadership roles in asset and wealth management. He began his career as a lawyer at Clifford Chance in Hong Kong and London.
Mark Loughridge, the leading independent director at Vanguard, states that the company is on the cusp of significant growth opportunities, including leveraging technology and customer experience to broaden our asset management services.
It remains unclear whether under Ramji’s leadership, Vanguard will expand its conservative ETF lineup to include commodities, derivatives, and cryptocurrencies, similar to BlackRock’s earlier move.
Ramji will be the first director of Vanguard who has not personally worked with John Bogle, the founder of the company in 1974, who passed away in 2019.