13 July 2004

The index fund specialist, Vanguard Investments Australia, is expanding its adviser sales operation to Sydney with the opening of a new office.

Vanguard's Head of Retail, Robin Bowerman, says the growth in support from advi sers for the index fund approach meant it was time to expand the adviser sales effort by opening a permanent office in Sydney.

The national sales manager, George Vassos, will relocate from Melbourne to establish the new Sydney
presence. Bowerman says Vanguard is now in the marketplace actively recruiting for a senior business
development manager to primarily handle platform and research relationships.

In 2003 Vanguard received almost $800 million in inflows from advisers, and now manages over $2.5 billion from this segment of the market. Vassos says while Vanguard had made great inroads with advisers in the past two years he was looking forward to working even more closely with key platforms, researchers and dealer groups in NSW to ensure the low-cost Vanguard message was getting through.

"It is an exciting challenge to be establishing the first branch office for Vanguard, and this further highlights our commitment to the financial advisory market in Australia".

"We have just launched a new fund - the Australian Shares High Yield Fund. With its focus on grossed -up yield it is a new style of fund for us so one of the priorities for the rest of this year is to get the message out to the market about why it is such an attractive proposition for income investors," Vassos says.

The Managing director of Vanguard, Jeremy Duffield, returned to Australia in 1996 to establish the local
operation after 15 years working for Vanguard in the US.

The Melbourne office has now grown to a staff of 105 and has $25 billion under management.