ABSTRACT
In 1852 the California Gold Rush was under way. People poured west and those who got lucky would strike it rich. As with the Internet boom about 150 years later, a whole infrastructure developed to serve the prospectors, providing goods and services from the respectable to the debauched. Back in California, Wells Fargo, shorn of its famous stagecoach business by the US Government during the First World War, had developed into a major US bank. Wells Fargo had a nice business called Wells Fargo Investment Advisers which had pioneered index funds – introducing the world's first index fund in 1971. It would be tempting, as a purely quantitative manager, for BGI to avoid governance issues altogether. BGI benefits from having an owner which is well capitalized and respected and not particularly controversial. BGI has participated actively in Sciteb's work on developing the non-executive directors (NEDs) through master-classes and the NEDX process, and also in the investor/Chairman dinners.
