Vanguard Buying JustInvest to Help Advisers Customize Portfolios

Vanguard Group is buying JustInvest LLC, a smaller investing upstart that helps financial advisers build personalized portfolios. According to a story in The Wall Street Journal, the deal marks the first ever corporate acquisition by the world’s second-largest asset manager since Vanguard’s start in the 1970s. It brings together companies with radically different businesses: Investment giant Vanguard is best known for funds that track indexes. JustInvest provides tools for investors and advisers to build bespoke portfolios. The purchase gives Vanguard another way to deepen ties with advisers. Vanguard oversees some $7.9 trillion in assets. Of that, about $3 trillion has already come into Vanguard through advisers, brokerages and other such middlemen. Vanguard will gain over a dozen new employees and roughly $1 billion in assets managed by JustInvest through the purchase.