John C. Van Eck   [1915-2014]

John Van Eck was a mutual fund pioneer. He founded International Investors Incorporated at the age of 40, in 1955. The company evolved and is currently known as Van Eck Global, a mutual fund management company, headquartered in New York City and managing about $35 billion.

In its early years the focus of the investment company was to provide a vehicle for American investors to invest in foreign growth stocks. But in 1968, Van Eck launched the country’s first gold-oriented mutual fund in time for investors to participate in the bull market in gold during the 1970’s.

Currently Van Eck Global offers a family of seven open-end mutual funds and more than fifty exchange traded funds under the Market Vectors brand.

Van Eck graduated from Williams College with a BA in 1936. He then entered the Harvard Business School and earned his MBA in 1938. During the war years he served in the U.S. Navy from 1941 until 1945.

Van Eck began his financial career as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley in 1946 and remained there until 1951.He then became a partner of Steckler and Moore, a New York Stock Exchange firm from 1951 until 1955, following which he started his own firm.

During his 50-year financial career, Mr. van Eck served as Chairman of the Foreign Analyst Committee of the New York Society of Security Analysts, Associate Editor for the Financial Analysts Journal, and as President of the New York Association of Foreign Analysts. He also served as a director of the Henley Group, Inc., Wheelabrator-Frye Inc., and the Eclipse Financial Trust.

Van Eck was born in San Francisco in 1915. His father was Jan Carel van Panthaleon van Eck who was the founder of the American branch of the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company, then a Dutch-British firm. The older Van Eck was one of its managing directors. The father had also inherited the aristocratic title of Baron, and was therefore also known as Baron Jan Carel van Eck, Baron van Eck, or Jan Carel van Panthaleon Baron van Eck. After he moved to the USA, he was known as Jan Carel van Eck.

John Van Eck passed away on July 1, 2014 at the advanced age of 98 at his home in Palm Beach, Florida. His close survivors are his wife, Sigrid van Eck and his son, Jan van Eck, who serves as Chief Executive Officer of Van Eck Global.

Another son, Derek van Eck, formerly Chief Investment Officer of Van Eck Global predeceased his father. He is also survived by two sisters, Agnes Reed and Henriette Warfield. Other survivors are his daughters in law Cynthia Van Eck and Deborah S. Van Eck and six grandchildren.

John Van Eck was a second generation Dutch American. His father was born in the Netherlands where he began his professional career with the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Corporation.

REFERENCES

Van Eck Global website

Other information was derived from family correspondence and from private memoirs, all supplied by Van Eck family.

 

E-BOOKS AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON; GOOGLE: Kindle Store Pegels

 

PROMINENT DUTCH AMERICANS, CURRENT AND HISTORIC

EIGHT PROMINENT DUTCH AMERICAN FAMILIES: THE ROOSEVELTS, VANDERBILTS AND OTHERS, 2015

FIFTEEN PROMINENT DUTCH AMERICAN FAMILIES: THE VAN BURENS, KOCH BROTHERS, VOORHEES AND OTHERS, 2015

PROMINENT DUTCH AMERICANS IN U.S. GOVERNMENT LEADERSHIP POSITIONS, 2015

 

DUTCH PEGELS INVOLVED IN WARS

ALLIED EUROPE CAMPAIGN—1944/1945: TACTICAL MISTAKES, 2017

THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN THE NETHERLANDS: MEMOIRS, 2017

FRENCH REVOLUTION, NAPOLEON AND RUSSIAN WAR OF 1812, 2015