Charles R. Schwab
Co-founder 1971Background
Charles Robert Schwab was born on July 29, 1937, in Sacramento, California, and grew up in Woodland. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Stanford University and subsequently completed his MBA at Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1961. His early career included work in investment analysis and portfolio management, as well as the operation of an investment newsletter in San Francisco during the 1960s. Schwab's personal experience with the barriers that commission structures and full-service broker mandates imposed on ordinary investors directly shaped the business philosophy he would bring to Charles Schwab & Co. He has been open about his dyslexia, which he has credited with shaping his visual and pattern-recognition thinking style, an approach that may have contributed to his ability to see structural inefficiencies in markets that text-dominant analysts overlooked.
Role at The Charles Schwab Corporation
Charles R. 'Chuck' Schwab founded the company in San Francisco in 1971 as First Commander Corporation, an investment newsletter and small brokerage. Before 1975, brokerage commissions were fixed, which made frequent investing expensive for ordinary savers. When the SEC abolished fixed commissions on May 1, 1975, Schwab cut prices sharply and positioned Charles Schwab & Co. as a discount broker that executed trades without bundled research or commission-driven sales. He sold the firm to BankAmerica in 1983 for $55 million, bought it back in a 1987 management buyout, and took it public on the NYSE that September. He served as CEO for most of the company's history, returned as CEO in 2004, handed the role to Walt Bettinger in 2008, and remains Co-Chairman of the board.
Education: Santa Barbara High School. Charles R. Schwab was born in 1937.