2. He grew up in Woodland, California
Sold magazine subscriptions to raise chickens
in his backyard for money
Attended Stanford University and received a
bachelor's degree in economics in 1959
3. Schwab made investing more accessible in
the discount brokerage business
His company reduced trade commissions and
gave more power to consumers to pick and
choose their investments
Introduced e-commerce investing, allowing
clients to execute, buy and sell orders online.
4. Schwab and two of his friends launched a
newsletter for investors in 1962.
It grew quickly and branched out to include a
$20 million mutual fund.
When the market crashed in 1969, Texas
ordered Schwab to stop taking mail orders
from Texans because he wasn't registered to
do business in the state.
After the legal fees left he was $100,000 in
debt.
5. He brokered a land deal for his uncle, who
paid his debt and offered him an additional
$100,000 to start his own business.
6. Schwab opened the first office of Charles
Schwab & Co. in San Francisco in 1971
In 1975, the Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC) discarded the old fixed-
rate system for buying and selling securities
in favor of negotiated rates. Under the new
system, brokers could charge whatever they
wanted.
7. Schwab targeted the small-investor market,
offering no-frills service and deep
commission discounts that were as much as
50% below that of his competition.
Schwab did away with the traditional service
of offering research, put his staff on salary,
and automated order processing via
computer
One of the first brokerages to do so
8. Schwab opened branch offices and offered
24-hour order taking, no-fee individual
retirement accounts, cash management
accounts, no-load mutual funds and
insurance, all industry firsts.
By 1981, Schwab had branch offices in 40
cities, 600 employees, 220,000 clients and
annual revenue of $42 million.
9. The company's expansion began to cut into profit,
and he had trouble raising capital to finance further
growth.
Schwab agreed to sell his company to Bank of
America (B of A) for $57 million worth of B of A stock,
making him the bank's largest individual shareholder.
He repurchased his firm from B of A for $230 million
in 1987.
A few weeks later, he took the company public to
raise capital to pay down its $200 million debt and
finance further expansion.
When Schwab took back over, the company soon
regained its status as the nation's leading discount
brokerage.
10. Schwab anticipated the Internet boom, and began
looking into e-commerce in 1995, and by the
end of the year, he had opened one of the first
online discount brokerages, e.Schwab.
By 1998, e.Schwab had become the No. 1 online
trader and accounted for more than half the
firm's trades.
By following his instincts rather than listening to
"the experts," Charles Schwab created a new form
of stock brokerage and paved the way for online
trading.
11. "I have a passion for the investor. I've always
been one myself, and the standard I apply to
all our services is: If it's good for me as an
investor, you'll see it.“ – Charles Schwab
"A man can succeed at almost anything for
which he has unlimited enthusiasm.“ –
Charles Schwab
