Mission & History
"Don’t settle for the conventional. Dare to be different." Jan van Eck, CEO
VanEck has a long history of empowering Investors with impactful portfolio opportunities. Across all market environments, we believe in putting our clients’ interests first – a core tenet of the VanEck brand.
Providing investors access to opportunities that will strengthen their portfolios is VanEck’s guiding principle. Through forward-looking, intelligently designed active and ETF solutions, we offer value-added exposures to emerging industries, asset classes and markets as well as differentiated approaches to traditional strategies.
We think beyond the financial markets to identify the trends—including economic, technological, political and social—that we believe will fuel investable opportunities. VanEck was one of the first U.S. asset managers to offer investors access to international markets and recognized early the transformative potential of gold investing, emerging markets and ETFs. Today, our firm’s capabilities range from core investment opportunities to more specialized exposures to enhance portfolio diversification.
Mission in Our Own Words
After the firm’s first international stock portfolio became the U.S.’s first gold mining portfolio, this transition would go on to shape the firm’s growth and investment philosophy. CEO Jan van Eck shares the story.
Understanding Our History
VanEck has a long history of empowering Investors with impactful portfolio opportunities. Across all market environments, we believe in putting our clients’ interests first – a core tenant of the VanEck brand.
Since our founding, VanEck has been privately owned and operated by the van Eck family. John van Eck launched the firm in 1955 to bring post-World War II investment opportunities to U.S. investors. In the early 1990s, when his sons, Derek and Jan, joined the Firm, VanEck undertook a series of business initiatives that have since provided substantial growth. Since his brother Derek’s passing in 2010, Jan has managed the firm’s growing global operations and continues to do so today. Learn more about VanEck by reading our corporate profile.
John C. van Eck, CFA
Founder
John van Eck was a well-known pioneer in international and gold investments. He founded International Investors Incorporated in 1955 to provide a convenient investment vehicle for Americans to invest in foreign growth stocks. Predicting that worldwide inflation would lead to gold mines offering better growth prospects than industrial and financial investments, Mr. van Eck moved the bulk of the portfolio into gold-mining shares in 1968 in time to participate in the great gold bull market of the 1970s.
MBA, Harvard University; BA, Williams College
Jan F. van Eck
Chief Executive Officer, Van Eck Associates Corporation
Member of the Board of Directors of Van Eck Associates Corporation
Director and President, Van Eck Securities Corporation
President, CEO and Trustee, VanEck Funds and VIP Trusts
President, CEO and Trustee, VanEck ETF Trust
Jan is the CEO of VanEck, a global investment manager with offices around the world. Headquartered in New York City since 1955, the firm has a long history of empowering Investors with forward-looking, intelligently designed mutual fund and ETF solutions. Jan joined the Firm in 1991 and its Executive Management Team in 1998, and leads the firm today.
Furthering VanEck’s mission to anticipate asset classes and trends, Jan created a variety of strategic beta, tactical allocation, emerging markets and commodity-related investment strategies in mutual fund, ETF and institutional formats. He founded the Firm’s ETF business in 2006. As one of the world’s largest ETF sponsors, the firm offers ETFs globally across a variety of equity and fixed income asset classes.
Jan holds a JD from Stanford University and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Williams College with a major in Economics. He is a Director of the National Committee on United States-China Relations. He routinely appears on CNBC and Bloomberg Television, and was a 2013 Finalist for Institutional Investor's Fund Leader of the Year. More recently, Jan was a 2020 Finalist for ETF.com’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Firm was named 2020 ETF Provider of the Year by Fund Intelligence.
Derek S. van Eck, CFA
Chief Investment Officer, Van Eck Associates Corporation
Principal and Director, Van Eck Associates Corporation
Principal and Director, Van Eck Securities Corporation
Derek van Eck was a widely respected commodities trader and global assets manager in New York’s financial industry. He joined Van Eck Associates Corporation in 1993 and served as Chief Investment Officer as well as Portfolio Manager of the Van Eck Global Hard Assets Fund and Van Eck VIP Global Hard Assets Fund. He began his career in the securities business in 1986 and was a member of the New York Society of Security Analysts and the Association of Investment Management and Research (AIMR), and served on the board of the Fred M. van Eck Forest Trust, managed in conjunction with the Pacific Forest Trust.
MBA, Northwestern University; BA, Williams College