Charles Schwab is chairman and founder of the brokerage firm that bears his name. The company averages 6 million trades per day across 33 million client accounts worth $7.8 trillion. Schwab was CEO of the business until 2008 and still owns about 7% of its stock. He founded the firm as a traditional brick-and-mortar brokerage in 1971, with $100,000 borrowed from his uncle. The business really took off when Schwab started charging half of what full-service brokers did, after an SEC deregulation of brokerage commissions.
