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An investigation by the S.E.C. and several states found that the company had failed to notify investors of changes in the terms of some funds, leading to higher capital gains taxes.
Jan. 17, 2025, 3:18 p.m. ET
Vanguard, the large mutual fund company, has agreed to pay $106 million in restitution to settle a securities regulatory investigation into whether the firm misled retail investors about the tax implications of changes in some of its retirement funds.
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the settlement on Friday along with a flurry of other settlements it reached with companies in Gary Gensler’s last days as the S.E.C.’s chair. He will officially step down on Monday.
The settlement with Vanguard was part of a multistate investigation led by New York, New Jersey and Connecticut along with other regulatory agencies.
The joint investigation found that Vanguard had failed to notify some investors of revisions in the terms of some of its retirement funds. Those changes led to higher capital gains taxes for hundreds of thousands of individual investors who held the funds in taxable accounts. In New York alone, Vanguard’s failure to disclose the changes led more than 15,000 residents to pay higher-than-anticipated capital gains, according to the New York attorney general’s office.
Vanguard, in settling with regulators, neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing, but was censured by the S.E.C.
The regulator said the misleading statements were made in the 2020 and 2021 prospectuses for the Vanguard Investor Target Retirement Funds. The company was charged with not telling retail investors of a change in fund terms that had prompted institutional investors to move their money to another investment fund and caused retail investors who didn’t move their money to be hit with “historically larger capital gains.”
