Vanguard Chairman and CEO Bill McNabb said Wednesday that non-U.S. financial regulators have become much more important to the mutual fund industry as assets become globalized.
He noted about a third of the assets of the typical target date fund retail investor are outside of this country.
In keeping with the increasing global imperative, McNabb, who chairs the Investment Company Institute, said more and more regulatory ideas in the U.S. have their genesis abroad, whereas that situation was more often reversed in the past.
McNabb said the experience of the United Kingdom and Australia with a fiduciary standard for retirement fund advisors helped the U.S. Department of Labor develop the “best interest” rule.
Claiming a financial transaction tax would have to be global to work, McNabb credited ICI lobbying in Europe with helping to persuade regulators over there the tax was a bad idea.
McNabb’s remarks came at the start of the mutual fund industry trade group’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C.