70 Years of People, Purpose, and Progress

What’s at the Core of VanEck?

Adam Phillips, Chief Operating Officer (ETFs), Joined in 2006:
It might be cliche, but my answer is people. It's definitely people. And it probably started for me before I came to VanEck, I interviewed with three people that had all been here for over 10 years, which I thought was a great sign. And lo and behold, I've been here 19 years and all three of them are still here today.

People care about what they do, they care about doing right by the client, and you can see it and you can feel it every day.

Greg Krenzer, Head of Investment Risk, co-Chief Operating Officer (Active), Joined in 1994:
I'd have to say that the true value is family. Mr. van Eck being here when I started, Jan and Derek taking over. Jan stepping up after Derek passing, and now seeing it come full circle. So I think family definitely a huge part of it.

Shawn Reynolds, Portfolio Manager, Global Resources, Joined in 2005:
From the very beginning, coming here was really Derek van Eck. He was a client and got to know Derek so well, and then when I decided to join, it was really because of Derek and because of the nature of the position here.

It had an international perspective. We always wanted to look through that lens to come up with interesting investment ideas. But I think the thing that really sticks with me with regards to Derek is his approach to again the team as a family, family comes first, the people come first. We always think that way. That's a vital part of this organization. We try to fulfill his legacy.

Jan van Eck, Chief Executive Officer, Joined in 1991, Became CEO in 2010:
We tried to always have VanEck be a collegial place, but with very high achievement standards. And Derek worked very hard to build in using modern portfolio management processes, a real institutional level of investment performance in that department. He managed one of our hedge funds and a pretty big institutional business, during the boom market of the commodities of the 2000s. He would always work hard and always challenge people’s investment premises, because the market's always changing.

Jane Pigott, Board Member, Joined VanEck Board in 2020:
When I look at the VanEck website and I look at intelligently designed strategies. And as a board member, I think about, are we delivering on that? And the van Eck family, as well as the VanEck companies, have been delivering on that for a long time.

We did a board meeting in California and had the opportunity to go to the Van Eck forest, which demonstrated just how Van Eck is being innovative and disruptive, but in a very deliberative, measurable fashion.

And in 1969, figuring out not only how to make a redwood forest economically sustainable, but how to be the first one to measurably do the carbon emissions and the greenhouse gas was an amazing accomplishment. And obviously in the DNA.

How Has VanEck Stayed Ahead of the Curve?

Eric Fine, Portfolio Manager, Active Emerging Markets Debt, Joined in 2009:
Buy the dip. Go where the puck is going, not where the puck is. And these are impossible traits to train. But gold in the 70s, right? Going with ETFs as a product in the 90s, crypto today, many opportunities to lose your nerve and EM bonds. Also easy world to lose your nerve. You can't teach that idea, go to where the puck is going. So I find that amazing.

Competing with yourself to make the whole better. That's an incredible trait. You could argue it's the definition of success.

Shawn Reynolds:
I've always kind of called this place conservatively innovative. And that sounds kind of like an oxymoron, right? But gold mining was very innovative in the 1960s. Then we got into diversified natural resources, started a hard assets fund, kind of one of the very first. And then you go, you hop forward into ETFs and you hop forward into crypto. So it's very open to lots and lots of different investment possibilities.

Greg Krenzer:
I think that the roots of the firm are based in Mr. van Eck converting the international mutual fund to a gold fund was very forward looking and very all in. The move to ETFs also very forward looking. And I have to say the digital assets and what we've done there. Out of the box doesn't really fit what we've done before. mean, it rhymes with a lot of stuff, but it was new. There's no reason why we couldn't be involved.

Brad Noll, Director, New York City and Long Island, Joined in 2007:
It's better to be early and help on the education front than be struggling and kind of late to that party or late to that theme. Being private, being family owned, we have the ability to invest in kind of no doubt themes or strategies and let the kind of opportunity or the marketplace catch up to our visions as a firm.

What Makes VanEck’s Culture Unique?

Joe Foster, Gold Strategist, Joined 1996:
Well, for me, it's the resilience and perseverance of the company. I mean, I've seen the company go through challenges that are pretty daunting challenges and we don't give up. We don't give up on ideas that we believe in. I mean, if we think we have a good idea, management, Jan and Derek have been willing to see these ideas through and eventually they pay off if you stick with them. So it's that perseverance that I really think is part of our culture.

Brad Noll:
I think myself and my colleagues have a profound sense of pride when representing VanEck in the community. And it's all driven from our culture. It is a family-run asset manager, but it is truly a team. It's all hands on deck. We win together. We tend to be competitive, but we're all rowing in the same direction across multi-channels from distribution to the marketing team, to the portfolio management, to capital markets. We do have wonderful culture built by the relationships and the people. And that is one thing that hope we never lose as we forge towards the next 70 years.

Jan van Eck:
A really great part of the VanEck ETF history is the ticker symbols. For some reason, we decided that it would be good to start being creative when it came to the ticker symbols. And so we had an agriculture ETF and we used the ticker symbol Moo, M-O-O.

And that really kicked off this idea of using tickers in a creative manner to sort of hopefully describe the underlying ETF.

What Memories Stand Out During Your Time at VanEck?

Adam Phillips:
I've got a bunch of stories, of course. One that comes to mind is 2006 when we launched our first ETF, which was our gold miners ETF, that tickers GDX. The giveaway was actually brought it with me. It's this gold pickaxe. There it is there.

It was maybe about a month after the launch, we were at a conference and we gave them away to all the people that walked by the table, probably gave away a couple hundred of those. And then when the conference was over, my colleague and I went to the airport to fly home and we got to the TSA screening and I looked in the box on the left and I probably saw 20 to 30 of these pickaxes that were not being allowed through in people's carry-on bags. So I asked the TSA person if I could take them all and put them in my bag and check the bag. And he's like, yeah, sure, go for it. And so we gave those away just in New York after that.

Joe Foster:
Well, it's only funny in hindsight and is definitely unexpected. I was out on a field trip, a research trip to Nicaragua. I was on a mining site and I was stung by a scorpion. This thing had crawled into my pants overnight and stung me on the back of the leg. And I've never felt anything so shocking and painful. It's like a jolt that goes through your entire body when you get stung.

I thought it was a spider, but on the floor was a three or four inch long scorpion. So we went to the manager and my driver, and he told the driver, to if I got sick to stop at a pharmacy and get the medicine or antidote or whatever they give you for scorpion bites. And I didn't get sick. I mean, my leg was very sore. But other than that, I survived and made it back to New York.

Tom Butcher, Director of ESG, Retired in 2024:
One of the most enjoyable moments was when we had the first screening of the documentary, Beyond the Trees, which we held actually San Francisco. At one point the curtains didn't work across the windows. And this was kind of mid-afternoon, and so for at least 15 minutes, I was standing on the banquette in front of the windows, holding up the curtain so that people could actually see the film.

Anyway, it went down really, really well. And we had a lot of very, very good questions. I worked freelance and full-time employee for 17 years with VanEck and I think that's probably one of the high points.

James Parker, Assistant Treasurer, Fund Administration, Joined in 2010:

One of the things about VanEck is that, even though it's grown and it's a big presence in the space, it still has that sort of family atmosphere. I still have memories of Halloween. And I remember Susan Lashley would make snickerdoodles, and the whole company would have that and everybody in the way Jan gets dressed up and encourages people to get dressed up on Halloween is pretty fun.

What Do You Hope for the Future of VanEck?

Tom Butcher:
I hope [VanEck] never loses its humanity. I hope it never goes off mission and that it continues as it always has is to put its clients first, but also its employees because I don't believe a firm can be really successful unless it treats its employees as human beings and not just cogs. And I think that's one of the wonderful things about having worked here. I never felt I was a cog. I was quite squeaky at times, but I was never a cog.

Jane Pigott:
On the growth side, it's been very interesting. Looking at this through the lens of a board member. We've had two portfolio manager transitions in the last 18 months, effectively, that have gone incredibly smoothly.

Because we were able to raise the successors and the folks who were going to step into the shoes of the portfolio manager knew the culture at VanEck and had succeeded there. Also knew the clients and the strategy and the process. So it went off without a hitch. And that ability to have success and succession and raise credible successors internally is something that's very unique to Van Eck.

Adam Phillips:
My hope is for us to just keep offering investors around the world long-term compelling investment themes that help them meet their needs. I think we do that really well with some unique offerings. I think we back it up with world-class research. And I hope that we can continue to do that and constantly keep the clients in mind.