Dimitris Sotiropoulos is Professor in Finance and Financial History at the Faculty of Business and Law of the Open University in the UK. He is currently working on his project 'Capital as asset to be managed: Episodes in the history of asset management'. Describing the focus of the project, he notes: 'Asset management has become the core operation in modern financial markets, with market-based finance overcoming banking in the size of assets. This research project traces the historical trajectory of this transformation. It offers a systematic insight into the long run evolution of finance outside banks, from the limited liability laws in the second half of the 19th century to the present.'
Amaury de Vicq de Cumptich joins CASFI from the University of Groningen, where he is an Assistant Professor of Economic History. 'I’m excited to be at CASFI to continue developing my VENI-funded project on the distribution of colonial profits in the Netherlands,' he says. 'My research combines economic and historical approaches to understand how individuals managed credit and investment, and how these everyday financial decisions shaped broader patterns of wealth and inequality over time. By tracing the long-term dynamics of who gained from colonial trade and how those profits were distributed, I hope to shed light on the historical roots of wealth inequality in Europe.'