The fee reductions range from five-hundredths to one-hundredth of a percentage point per year. With many of the funds already charging low fees of less than 0.20 percent Of assets, some of the reductions were the equivalent of a 20 percent fee cut.
Intense competition among managers of index mutual and exchange-traded funds has led to sharp price cutting across the industry over the past few months. BlackRock (>> BlackRock, Inc.), the largest ETF manager, and brokerage firm Charles Schwab (>> Charles Schwab Corp) both announced price cuts earlier this year.
At Vanguard's line of broad equity sector funds, such as the firm's Consumer Discretionary ETF (>> Vanguard Consumer Discretionary ETF) and Health Care ETF (>> Vanguard Health Care ETF), fees declined to 0.14 percent from 0.19 percent. Vanguard, based in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, posted a full list of the fee cuts at http://link.reuters.com/cut84t.
Vanguard raised fees slightly on three actively managed equity mutual funds, including on both share classes of the $17.6 billion Vanguard International Growth Fund. Fees on the "Investor" share class
(Reporting by Aaron Pressman; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)