His father moved to the US from the Netherlands in the early 20th century as an employee of Shell plc to expand its international business.

The International Investors Gold Fund received large subscriptions and had more than $1 billion in assets under management (AUM).

In 1996, the firm signed a joint venture agreement with Shenyin & Wanguo to tap the fund market of mainland China.

It was compared to SPDR Gold Shares which was launched in November 2004 and although it was not as popular, its AUM rose to $5 billion making it one of the firm's biggest successes.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission stated in March 2021 that VanEck wasn't among the top firms when it came to AUM but requested for more information.

In April 2023, VanEck terminated its application and let go of more than 10 employees who were supposed to be part of its planned China mutual fund team.

However commentators have stated that its top holdings were large companies such as Twitter and Facebook making it similar to an S&P 500 index that focuses on technology.

In addition the constituent members were only rebalanced on a monthly basis so companies such as GameStop, AMC and BlackBerry that had trading frenzies in January that year would not appear.

Sanctions had been imposed on Russian companies, meaning they could not be traded as single stocks or within ETFs in the west.