You’d think Part One would have been enough to make people wake the hell up about T. Rowe Price. Turns out, peeling the first layer barely scratched the grime off. This firm has been systematically fucking over clients, investors, and ordinary people for years, and what we’re about to lay bare makes the first batch of scandals look like minor traffic violations. This is Part Two, the long, ugly, unvarnished continuation.

The 401(k) Settlement – Seven Million to Piss on Retirement

For years, T. Rowe Price pushed employees into their own high-fee funds while cheaper, perfectly adequate alternatives sat unused. This wasn’t an accident or a minor oversight – it was intentional. They designed products to steer unsuspecting workers into their own coffers, milking management fees that slowly ate into people’s pensions over decades. Ordinary employees, trusting the firm with their retirement savings, had their compounding growth systematically gutted.

The legal settlement in 2022 for $7 million was a slap-on-the-wrist, not justice. Seven million bucks to cover theft that cumulatively cost workers tens of thousands each. The settlement didn’t fix the structures that allowed this theft. The same incentives that encouraged the steering of funds still exist. This isn’t a mistake – it’s the business model. The people who were supposed to protect these savings looked the other way while the system was rigged against the little guy. Fucking obscene.

Meanwhile, the executives walked away with their bonuses untouched, laughing at the illusion of accountability. The settlement was marketed as resolution, but in reality, it was a corporate pat-on-the-head. Clients paid the price, lawyers counted fees, and T. Rowe Price carried on as if nothing had happened.

Fees – Slow, Licensed Robbery

The overcharging scandal isn’t sexy, but it’s brutal in impact. Plaintiffs alleged that T. Rowe Price charged retail fees on assets that should have qualified for institutional pricing, running into hundreds of millions. Every percentage point of overcharge is money that compounds out of the pockets of ordinary investors year after year. It’s not instant theft – it’s slow, legalised robbery, perfectly engineered to exploit inertia and complexity.

Imagine working your arse off, trusting your pension to grow steadily, only to have a system quietly siphon your money. That’s exactly what happened. The firm benefited from clients’ ignorance, apathy, or inability to spot the subtle erosion of their returns. Meanwhile, executives got to crow about fund growth while clients’ actual outcomes stagnated or declined.

The worst part? It was entirely predictable. Any halfway competent fiduciary would see the conflict inherent in steering funds toward higher-fee internal products. But instead of fixing the issue, the firm profited from it. This isn’t oversight – it’s greed baked into the operational DNA.

The Dell Proxy Clusterfuck – $194 Million of Fuckery

Their proxy voting systems royally fucked up during Dell’s buyout, miscasting votes in a way that ultimately cost clients around $194 million. The official explanation? A “glitch.” Bullshit. A glitch implies an occasional hiccup. This was a governance failure that redistributed wealth from ordinary shareholders to the wrong pockets.

Proxy votes aren’t ceremonial – they determine boards, executive pay, and the strategic direction of companies. When they misfire, clients lose influence and money simultaneously. It’s not some abstract accounting error; it’s a direct, measurable hit to people’s livelihoods. The fact that T. Rowe Price collected management fees throughout this chaos is grotesque.

No one at the top took meaningful responsibility. No one redesigned the system to prevent the same disaster from happening again. The glitch was allowed to remain, and the fallout was absorbed by the clients. That’s not incompetence – that’s structural negligence, wrapped in the thin veil of technological inevitability.

Vendor Breach – Handing Lives to Idiots

They outsourced critical retirement plan administration to a third party. That third party got hacked. Millions of clients had their personal data exposed. Identity theft risk, frozen accounts, months of stress for ordinary people – and the executives at T. Rowe Price? Sitting comfortably, having outsourced blame.

The legal and PR teams managed to extract a settlement from the vendor while keeping the firm’s hands “clean.” But let’s be real: outsourcing doesn’t absolve responsibility. You pass risk to clients when you let contractors handle their lives without adequate oversight. Millions of records at risk because a firm wanted efficiency over accountability. That’s negligence in all caps. It’s unforgivable.

The human impact here is enormous. People faced credit fraud, freezing of funds, and months of anxiety while the firm counted its fees. The “solution” benefited lawyers and the vendor, not the victims. That’s how T. Rowe Price has operated for years – systematically shifting harm to the weak and reaping profit from the chaos.

Voting With Management – Bending for Profit

Multiple independent analyses show that T. Rowe Price votes with company management far more often when the firm has commercial relationships with them. That’s not coincidence – it’s calculated. Boards, executive pay, and climate policy are all shaped by votes that the firm bends to protect its own interests rather than the shareholders’.

The structural problem here is stark: conflicts of interest are baked into the model, and the people who should be safeguarding client money often vote against it. Ordinary investors and pensioners get fucked, while the executives secure better relationships and more lucrative deals. Stewardship in name only. It’s hypocrisy at the highest level, and the people paying the price barely have a seat at the table.

Valeant – Selective Morality for Cowards

They dragged Valeant into court over Philidor when it hurt their balance sheet. But let’s be clear: this isn’t principle. It’s opportunism. They selectively pick battles, suing only when financial impact is immediate and ignoring systemic or ongoing misconduct when silence keeps profits high.

The pattern is obvious: fight when it helps the firm, stay quiet when it doesn’t. That’s cowardice dressed up in legalistic language. Clients and ordinary shareholders see none of this selective outrage; they only feel the consequences when their money is at risk.

Russia Fallout – Closing the Stable Door After the Horse Has Bolted

When Russian securities plummeted, they closed the Emerging Europe Fund to new investors – after the losses had hit. That’s reactive, bullshit management. Protecting optics while leaving investors holding dust. Clients bore the losses. Executives saved their own asses. That’s a systemic pattern of looking after the firm first and the people who pay for its services last.

It’s not competence. It’s opportunism disguised as risk control. And it has been happening for years. People trust this firm with their money, and this is how it’s treated.

Cummins – Holding Shares While Billions Blow Up

Fact: T. Rowe Price has been a longstanding institutional holder in Cummins. Fact: Cummins paid $1.675 billion for emissions violations. Public health consequences, environmental harm, billions of dollars in penalties – and T. Rowe Price? Quietly holding the stock, silently benefiting while failing to push for accountability.

This isn’t a moral lapse. It’s structural greed. If stewardship meant anything, this is where it should show. Instead, environmental disaster is treated like another profit-and-loss line. Obscene, predictable, and entirely in line with a history of putting profit over principle.

The Pattern – Incentives Over Ethics, Always

Pull it all together and the picture is clear: fee structures that milk compounding, proxy votes skewed by conflicts, outsourced platforms that dump risk on clients, reactive behaviour that protects optics, selective litigation for convenience. This is not incompetence – it’s the operating model. People lose. Executives win. Repeat. That is the real, structural scandal.

What To Do – Stop the Slow Robbery

Transparency. Independent audits of fees and proxy votes. Conflict disclosures. Financial consequences when clients are harmed. No PR bullshit. No excuses. Stop the slow, legalised theft. That’s all.

Part Two exists because T. Rowe Price has been doing this for years. Will we write a Part Three? As long as T. Price Rowe gives us reason to, you can bet your 401k on it!

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

Shareholder Spotlight : The Dark Side of T. Rowe Price (Part Two)