Tim Buckley and his team may be pushing Vanguard [profile] into an alternative product area that the low-cost leviathan hasn't tried in 17 years.

Mortimer J. Buckley Vanguard President, CEO

The crew of the world's biggest mutual fund firm is talking with HarbourVest Partners, Pantheon, and at least one more firm about offering private equity funds to clients, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Philadelphia Business Journal and ThinkAdvisor also picked up on the news.

Vanguard reportedly already offers liquid alternatives to institutional and high net worth clients. Yet the firm hasn't dabbled in the PE side of the business since a short-lived partnership with Hamilton Lane Advisors, a partnership that started in the fall of 2001 and ended by the next spring.

"It was difficult to raise enough money to make this a cost-effective operation," a Vanguard spokesperson told MFWire in 2002 when the Hamilton Lane partnership ended. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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