New Vanguard CEO hires 10th non-Vanguard exec, a fellow BlackRocker • MaxMyInterest goes up-market with yacht loans • Ron ‘Omani’ Carson is offering post-materialism soul recovery for $8,500 a month

The Vanguard Group has hired yet another ex-BlackRock executive, lifting to ten* the number of outside hires since CEO Salim Ramji joined the firm 18 months ago. 

The Malvern, Pa., manager of $12 trillion just appointed former BlackRock US wealth advisory head of solutions, Eve Cout, as principal and its new head of advisor solutions, effective February, multiple sources report.

Cout, who spent almost 16 years at BlackRock – Ramji worked at the firm for a decade – follows a slew of other Wall Street executives just in the door at Vanguard. 

They include another BlackRock hire** and at least one apiece from Goldman Sachs, Nuveen and Fidelity Investments. See: Vanguard names Joanna Rotenberg to replace Matt Benchener as retail chief.

"Vanguard’s senior leadership was historically almost entirely homegrown, so the outside hiring spree under Ramji is genuinely new – and clearly intentional," says Jeff DeMaso, a leading Vanguard observer and editor of the Independent Vanguard Adviser newsletter. 

“The upside of external hires is distance. It’s hard for someone who has spent 15 to 20 years inside an organization to say, 'We need to rethink how this works.' Leaders coming from BlackRock or Fidelity don’t have that inertia. They’re better positioned to change processes,” DeMaso explains.

The wave of new hires has Ramji's fingerprints all over it. 

Appointed from outside as CEO in July 2024, Ramji is tasked with modernizing Vanguard's technology, and diversifying its revenue into areas like alternative investing, all the while threading the needle to assure Vanguard loyalists that he's just as much of a believer in the wisdom of late founder Jack Bogle. See: Ramji is an outright 'Boglehead,' he says.

Bogle-esque fee cuts are certainly continuing, too.

Vanguard announced yet another slew of fee cuts for its ETFs and mutual funds, Feb. 2. See: Vanguard's latest vast fund fee slash puts its CEO on defensive because it's enough-already to some critics.

Culture risk

Yet the risk Vanguard faces from adding so many new faces from the outside "is cultural erosion,” DeMaso says.

"If outside hires don’t absorb [the culture] – or if insiders conclude advancement now requires leaving – you risk losing talented culture carriers. Some recent departures, like Karin Risi, hint at that tension. See: Vanguard completes shakeup with outsiders Salim Ramji, Joanna Rotenberg supplanting firm lifers Tim Buckley, Karin Risi.

“That said, Vanguard’s culture is unusually strong and durable – it’s not invincible, but it has a moat,” DeMaso adds.

"Keeping leaders like Greg Davis in place as President, [and] chief investment officer matters a lot in maintaining that balance.

"Yet the “bottom line” is that “Ramji believes that hiring outside talent – building a ‘professional management class’ – is worth the risk."

No overnight change

A source close to Vanguard disputes the characterization of the firm's recent hires as unusual, or a ‘break-from-the-past,’ stating that external hires are far from an “overnight change.”

The source states that Vanguard has always pursued top talent. A case in point is former Chief Financial Officer Mike Rollings, who joined the firm from MassMutual in 2016, . See: Vanguard completes internal split into two giant teams.

The firm's new CFO, John Bendl, also came from an outside firm in KPMG, where served as partner, but he then spent the next nine years working his way up the Vanguard corporate ladder. 

Vanguard declined to comment specifically on the number of new hires made internally or externally, but a company spokesperson states that the firm is “proud that top industry talent is drawn to [its] mission.”

MaxMyInterest makes RIAs yacht loan officers– with FDIC services still floating the mothership

RIA cash manager MaxMyInterest is now offering RIAs’ wealthiest clients a swath of high-end loans for hard assets like fine art and yachts, as well as upper-bracket mortgages.

The New York City held-away cash manager just partnered with an undisclosed "private" bank to cross-sell its high-net-worth and ultrahigh-net-worth lending services to RIAs and individual retail investors using Max’s cash management software.

"We designed Max Private to meet a large, unmet need in the market … Already, many large RIAs are lining up to offer [it] to their clients," says CEO, Gary Zimmerman, via email.

"Max itself is not a lender, but we’ve combined Max’s innovative approach to cash management with the full capabilities of a private bank to enable RIAs to meet the needs of their most valuable clients," he adds.

The new service does not require investors to open new brokerage or cash accounts, and it still largely depends on Max’s pool of banking partners to muster up to $8 million of FDIC-insured cash – with yields averaging 3.78% – for which it charges a 4-basis-point quarterly fee.

The 2013-founded – and profitable – firm’s new private bank partner will provide further access to its own banking network for the firm’s wealthiest clients, ensuring up to $200 million of FDIC protection, per married household.

RIAs can white-label the software too, including the option for branded debit and credit cards.

Its launch also comes two months after one of the "big-three" in RIA cash management, StoneCastle, was acquired by FiServ.

Ron ‘Omani’ Carson invites lost people with ‘a lot of money,’ to follow him. He charges $8,500 a month.

Ron ‘Omani’ Carson is proselytizing a post-materialism consciousness as a product to 75 executives but the best things in life are still not free.

It costs $8,500. Every month.

The former LPL Financial brokerage star and founder of $55 billion of managed assets, Carson Group, got the jump on his concept from a reptile.

“On November 12, 2022, I had [psychedelic drug] DMT from the Sonoran desert toad, and I went from believing to knowing," said Carson, who now legally goes by ‘Omani,’ or ‘walking into a stiff wind' to Forbes, in a Feb. 5 feature.

"I’m going to devote my life to finding more Ron Carsons and having them have an awakening and a transformation. I can see them a mile away – they have a lot of money but they don’t have any joy in their life,” he added.

Carson, ever since 1993, had a side coaching business, PEAK Advisor Alliance, that had sort of a Tony Robbins-for-advisors vibe but allowed IBD reps to join in. See: Eavesdropping: Ron Carson gets an electric reception at his PEAK event, and calms the waters surrounding his new RIA He sold a 33% chunk of it in 2016.

The subscription product will lift revenues  at his 2024-founded start-up, Omya,  and membership, by a factor of four, up from $2.55 million annually, and 25, respectively, he told the New York publication.

Carson embraced the esoteric in 2022, and praises “game chang[ing]” psychedelics for their benefits to “emotional stability.” 

There is sugar to make the woo-woo medicine go down.

Omya offers access to capital, fancy dinners, spiritual healing, and start-up and peer support, often at Carson’s Omaha ranch.

Though spiritually impoverished billionaires are encouraged, jerks might get screened out.

Omani offers the program on an ‘invitation only’ basis.

* Bloomberg first reported the 10-strong tally of recent external Vanguard hires.

** Matthew Jackson (ex-BlackRock) joined Vanguard as senior portfolio manager for leveraged finance in December; Pete Spera (ex-Goldman) joined Vanguard as head of digital analytics for advice and wealth management in October; Kathryn Condon (ex-Fidelity) joined as chief marketing officer in January; and head of private markets strategy, Bill Stout, joined from Nuveen in July of last year.

Other external hires include the late 2024 appointment of former Fidelity executive, Joanna Rotenberg, now the firm's head of retail; and Tonya Robinson, who joined Vanguard from KPMG in October 2024, as the firm's new general counsel.