The board of trustees of Vanguard Selected Value Fund has renewed the fund’s investment advisory arrangements with Pzena Investment Management, LLC (Pzena), Cooke & Bieler, L.P. (C&B), and Donald Smith & Co., Inc. (Donald Smith & Co.). The board determined that renewing the fund’s advisory arrangements was in the best interests of the fund and its shareholders.
The board based its decisions upon an evaluation of each advisor’s investment staff, portfolio management process, and performance. This evaluation included information provided to the board by Vanguard’s Portfolio Review Department, which is responsible for fund and advisor oversight and product management. The Portfolio Review Department met regularly with the advisors and made presentations to the board during the fiscal year that directed the board’s focus to relevant information and topics.
The board, or an investment committee made up of board members, also received information throughout the year during advisor presentations. For each advisor presentation, the board was provided with letters and reports that included information about, among other things, the advisory firm and the advisor’s assessment of the investment environment, portfolio performance, and portfolio characteristics.
In addition, the board received periodic reports throughout the year, which included information about the fund’s performance relative to its peers and benchmark, as applicable, and updates, as needed, on the Portfolio Review Department’s ongoing assessment of the advisor.
Prior to their meeting, the trustees were provided with a memo and materials that summarized the information they received over the course of the year. They also considered the factors discussed below, among others. However, no single factor determined whether the board approved the arrangements. Rather, it was the totality of the circumstances that drove the board’s decisions.
Nature, extent, and quality of services
The board reviewed the quality of the fund’s investment management services provided by Pzena, C&B, and Donald Smith & Co. over both the short and long term and took into account the organizational depth and stability of each advisor. The board considered the following:
Pzena. Founded in 1995, Pzena is a global investment management firm that employs a classic value investment approach. Pzena seeks to buy good businesses at low prices, focusing exclusively on companies that are underperforming their historically demonstrated earnings power. Pzena’s research team conducts intensive fundamental research, buying companies only when the problems are judged to be temporary, management has a viable strategy to generate earnings recovery, and much of the downside risk is believed to already be factored into the share price. Pzena has managed a portion of the fund since 2014.
C&B. Founded in 1949, C&B is an independently owned investment boutique with assets across six domestic value strategies. The portfolio management team comprises eight analysts/portfolio managers that cover the entire market-cap spectrum and specialize in particular sectors. The team has employed the same research-driven, bottom-up, quality value approach for more than six decades, seeking to invest in high-quality companies trading at attractive valuations. While the