Our roots go back to the early 1990s when Compendeon CEO/CIO Erik van Dijk started his work on the Man-Machine investment concept. Man-Machine integrates the number-crunching strengths and rigor of quantitative asset management (‘machine’) with the realization that price formation in financial markets is in the end always the result of supply and demand interaction between human beings (‘man’).

The approach has benefited from a close cooperation with Noble Prize laureate Dr. Harry Markowitz, who contributed his tremendous expertise in the risk management field.

Compendeon was founded in 2004 as a hybrid asset management / consultancy firm providing its clientele with advisory and hands-on asset management services. But its predecessors during the period 1990-2004 have been part of well-known entities like Fortis Investments (NL) and United Asset Management (USA).

From the very beginning, our core areas of expertise were ‘Manager Selection’ (Fiduciary Management) and ‘Asset Allocation’ (GTAA / Global Macro). In 2007/08 Emerging Markets Equities was added to this list as a logical, well-performing specialty, making use of the fact that our flagship GTAA model covers approximately 50 countries, many of which are emerging.