Vanguard Settles with SEC, Agrees to Pay $106 Million

The SEC announced today that Vanguard will pay over $106 million to settle charges against it. The charges allege that Vanguard issued misleading statements to investors about retirement funds.

The funds received from this settlement will be distributed to the investors in question.

SEC’s Legal Battle with Vanguard

Vanguard, an American investment group, has run afoul of the SEC and its regulatory measures. The firm has not had many confrontations with the SEC in recent years.

Although it is a major ETF issuer, it has generally avoided crypto ETFs. The SEC’s approval of Ethereum ETFs didn’t change the equation for the company, either.

However, this state of affairs is now changing. In a press release, the SEC claimed that Vanguard deliberately misled investors about several key components of its Institutional Target Retirement Funds (TRFs).

As a result, some investors faced huge tax liabilities and diminished returns. Vanguard settled the accusations and agreed to pay a huge fine.

“Materially accurate information about capital gains and tax implications is critical to investors saving for their retirements. Firms must ensure that they are accurately describing to investors the potential risks and consequences associated with their investments,” claimed Corey Schuster, Chief of the Division of Enforcement’s Asset Management Unit.

It’s particularly interesting that the SEC settled the Vanguard case today, considering that it will soon undergo radical changes. Its Chair, Gary Gensler, will resign this weekend, and the SEC will subsequently cool down its major crypto prosecutions.

Earlier today, the agency fined DCG in what was potentially Gensler’s last-ever enforcement as the SEC chair.

However, this same dynamic may not play out between the SEC and Vanguard. Vanguard is a major investment bank, and thanks to growing institutional acceptance, it holds substantial crypto connections.

Its current CEO even led BlackRock’s effort to launch a Bitcoin ETF. However, competitors like BlackRock have thoroughly wedded themselves to crypto in the last year.

That is, the firm has avoided crypto ETFs, cutting off access to a billion-dollar market area. This is the important dilemma between Vanguard and the SEC: How will the Commission’s crypto cool-down impact it?

This alleged offense has little to do with the industry, but Gary Gensler is still in charge. It’s unclear what the SEC will do after he leaves.

In other words, this settlement could be an important test case for the agency. If there is no further discord between the SEC and Vanguard in the near future, it could signal that the firm falls under general amnesty.

However, if the SEC under Paul Atkins pursues another battle, it will show that these limited crypto connections won’t stave off future scrutiny.