About

Van Hedge Fund Advisors International, Inc. and its affiliates (“VAN”) was founded in 1992. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, VAN, a SEC Registered Investment Advisor has these distinguishing characteristics:

VAN performed the first large-scale research on hedge funds with methodological assistance from faculty of the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University, in the early 1990’s.

VAN maintains what it believes to be the largest hedge fund database in the world, with approximately 5,000 hedge funds. VAN also keeps data on an additional 900 funds that are no longer in operation. This information may be used for research purposes.

VAN produces monthly the Van Hedge Fund Index of U.S. and offshore hedge fund performance; it is setting the standard for such information.

VAN information is quoted extensively in the international media, based on Nexis and Dow Jones Interactive media scans.

VAN’s hedge fund information is well recognized as to its quality. The Milken Institute recently used it extensively in their policy brief on hedge funds. The International Monetary Fund also sought VAN’s help for their Occasional Paper on hedge funds. VAN was invited to testify before the U.S. House Banking and Finance Committee on Long Term Capital Management in 1998. Cerulli Associates, a prestigious Boston consulting firm, used us as their exclusive provider of aggregate hedge fund data in a white paper on the industry. The Common Fund also uses our information for some of its benchmarking.

VAN offers the following products and services:

  • Turnkey Fund of Funds Services
  • Portfolio Construction
  • Subadvisory and White Label Services
  • Funds of Funds
  • Structured Products
  • Manager Searches
  • Guaranteed Funds
  • Benchmarking
  • Hedge Fund Indices
  • Due Diligence
  • Investable Hedge Fund Indices

VAN’s institutional clients include, among others, some of the world’s largest financial institutions, institutional and high-net worth consultants, and a wide variety of financial advisors. Our individual clients include representatives from Fortune 500 families and other sophisticated investors whose personal net worth is from the multiple millions to multiple billions.

VAN does not publish directories of individual hedge fund information and releases information on individual hedge funds to accredited investors only after obtaining the manager’s permission.

GEORGE FARR is the Chairman of Greenwich-Van. Mr. Farr was former Vice Chairman of the
American Express Company. Prior to that he was a Senior Partner/Director of McKinsey & Company.
More recently he was a Presidentially-appointed member of the Board of Oversight for the federal Internal Revenue Services. Mr. Farr graduated with B.A. and MBA degrees from the University of Michigan. He is currently on the boards of Amerigives, Swiss Reinsurance (Zurich) and Misys PLC (UK).

THOMAS WHELAN is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Greenwich-Van. He is also Chairman of the Greenwich-Van Investment Committee. Mr. Whelan’s background includes extensive global financial services industry experience. Prior to his position with Greenwich-Van, he held senior positions at Morgan Stanley where he built their international and North American derivatives business. He was also appointed to the Management Committee, made Co-Chairman of the Finance Committee and appointed Head of Firm-Wide Risk Management. Upon his subsequently joining NatWest, he was made Chief Executive Officer of the Global Equity Division and Member of the Investment Bank Management Committee. He managed expansion of the Equity Division throughout major financial centers around the world. When Deutsche Bank acquired NatWest’s Investment Banking Business, and prior to joining Greenwich-Van, Mr. Whelan chose to devote himself full time to the management of his Family Office, which invests in hedge funds, venture capital and private equity.