听力原文：How would you define your client base？We think of ourselves as having three impor

听力原文：How would you define your client base？

We think of ourselves as having three important client segments: First is the everyday investors with the resources on hand to invest with Vanguard, who might be just starting out with an IRA, for example. The second type of client is the affluent individual who owns multiple funds and may seek advice services from us. And the third, a very important client segment is corporations, winch range from small to large, domestic and international companies. We provide corporations with investment-management services, while also serving as the manager of their employee-retirement plans.

So, when you look at Vanguard's overall client base, we are, in a very real sense, Americans from recent college graduates starting their first day on the job to people with large amounts of accumulated wealth to sophisticated pension-fund managers.

How have your services evolved over the years, and will they remain relatively consistent？

They've evolved quite a bit. In fact, one of the core principles we live by internally is that we have to adapt, evolve, and continuously improve. That's something we believe innately and preach to our new "crew members", our term for employees. Our largest asset, of course, is our extremely loyal client base. So, while we never stray from our core mission of increasing our clients' wealth and meeting their objectives, we continuously adapt and evolve by enhancing our services.

Speaking of moving forward, how has the economic downturn affected Vanguard's business？ And what's your prediction for the near future？

Our business is so dependent on market psychology that, in some ways, we don't directly correlate with the economy. But what we've seen over the past six months is confidence, and it's confidence at the corporate level. When we meet with corporate clients, they feel better about their ability to invest and their prospects moving forward. That impacts both the market and our business. On the retail side of the house, we believe that there's a great deal more confidence in the economy, the worst of the recession is behind us, and that the future looks bright.

Financial products often look similar from company to company. How do you differentiate Vanguard？

That's always difficult because we have a lot of great competition, but Vanguard has a few compelling attributes, which we feel set us apart. For one, we're owned by our clients. We have a single master: the clients. We don't have public shareholders; there's no parent company. So, 100 percent of our energy and attention is devoted to the clients.

The second key attribute is value. We live to a simple mission statement: to be the world's highest-value provider of investment services. So, every judgment we make about a service or product is geared toward making it the best one available. Also, value is a combination of performance which is critically important in the investment business -- service duality, and cost. We emphasize these three elements of value continually.

And third, we're disciplined. There are a lot of things we just won't do, such as compete outside our sphere of expertise. Other companies, recognizing that this is a highly competitive marketplace, will try to co-opt your space with marketing, as opposed to substance. Our view is that we'll let substance define our position in the market, instead of spending a lot of our clients' money to do that.

Do you focus primarily on North America？

Investment management is an increasingly global business for us. We've been in the global marketplace for about seven years, and a growing share of our cash flow is coming from international investors. Growth opportunities in the United States remain considerable for us, but we're also fully committed to enlarging our footprint in the Pacific, South America, and Europe in particular.

There's no doubt that corporate governance scandals have affected the public's view of the corpo

A．Most of them are recent college graduates.

B．They are investors of different levels and ranges.

C．The majority are affluent and sophisticated pension-fund managers.