John Bogle turned investing upside down.
By founding Vanguard Group, and persisting through the disappointing early years of running the first index mutual fund available to individual investors, he ended up slashing fees paid by hundreds of millions of regular people.
Bogle, who died Wednesday at age 89, also squeezed profit margins on Wall Street, which he loudly and persistently criticized for treating investors poorly. In the end, fund investors may save more than $1 trillion thanks to Bogle’s efforts, according to calculations by Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas in 2016.
Bloomberg News asked prominent investors and executives who knew Bogle to weigh in on both his legacy and personality. Here’s what they remembered and what others tweeted:
David Swensen, chief investment officer at Yale University
“Jack Bogle transformed the world for individual investors by providing a safe haven for their assets. Starting with an idea (articulated in his senior thesis at Princeton), Jack created Vanguard, which today manages trillions of dollars of assets, driven by fiduciary responsibility to millions of participants, not by profits.
Working tirelessly to educate the public on the virtues of long-term investment in low-cost, broad-based index funds, Jack did more to advance the interests of individual investors than any person in history. He was my friend and my hero.”
Charles Schwab, chairman and founder of Charles Schwab Corp.
“Jack was a pioneer who brought the wisdom of low-cost, long-term investing to millions of people since founding Vanguard and extolling the power of index investing. Like all pioneers, he pushed into new territories, and we’re all better off because of it.”
Jeremy Grantham, co-founder of GMO