Financial Engines

Bill co-founded Financial Engines in 1996 with the purpose of making the kind of expert investment advice and portfolio management previously only available to high-end institutional investors accessible to everyone. He is currently a Director Emeritus with Financial Engines. In 1990, he received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in developing models to aid investment decisions. Bill is currently the STANCO 25 Professor of Finance, Emeritus, at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1970, having previously taught at the University of Washington and the University of California at Irvine.

Bill was one of the originators of the Capital Asset Pricing Model, developed the Sharpe Ratio for investment performance analysis, the binomial method for the valuation of options, the gradient method for asset allocation optimization, and returns-based style analysis for evaluating the style and performance of investment funds. He has written seven books, including Portfolio Theory and Capital Markets (McGraw-Hill, 1970), Asset Allocation Tools (Scientific Press, 1987), Fundamentals of Investments (with Gordon J. Alexander and Jeffrey Bailey, Prentice-Hall, 2000), and Investments (with Gordon J. Alexander and Jeffrey Bailey, Prentice-Hall, 1999) and has published articles in a number of professional journals. Bill is past president of the American Finance Association. Bill received his Ph.D., M.A., and B.A. in Economics from the University of California at Los Angeles. He is also the recipient of a Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa from DePaul University, a Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Alicante (Spain), a Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Vienna (Austria), a Doctor of Science, Economics, Honoris Causa from the London Business School, and the UCLA Medal, UCLA's highest honor.

Joe is a nationally prominent expert on capital markets, corporate governance, and securities litigation. His scholarship has been published in the Harvard, Yale, and Stanford law reviews, and he has been recognized as one of the most influential attorneys in the United States. Joe founded the award-winning Stanford Securities Class Action Clearinghouse, which provides detailed, online information about the prosecution, defense, and settlement of federal class action securities fraud litigation. He also launched Stanford Law School's executive education programs, and continues to co-direct Directors' College, the nation's leading venue for the continuing professional education of directors of publicly traded corporations. In addition, he co-directs the Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance, as well as the Stanford Program in Law, Economics, and Business.

Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1990, Joe was a commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission, served on the staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisors as counsel and senior economist for legal and regulatory matters, and was an associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. Early in his career he was a research associate at the Brookings Institution, and an economist and consultant with the RAND Corporation.

Craig was chief executive officer and a co-founder of Virtual Law Partners LLP, a virtual law firm (VLP). Prior to co-founding VLP, Craig was the chairman and a co-founder of Venture Law Group, a law firm specializing in representing high technology companies.  Craig graduated from Yale in 1968 (magna cum laude), spent two years teaching in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia, worked with a large computer maker as a systems computer programmer and left to start law school at Stanford. After law school he joined the Palo Alto law firm of Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati (WSG&R) as its 14th attorney. In 1993 he left WSG&R with 13 other attorneys to start Venture Law Group, which grew to over 100 attorneys before merging with a larger law firm in 2003. Craig has been recognized by BusinessWeek as one of Silicon Valley's top 25 "movers and shakers," by Red Herring Magazine as one of nine Silicon Valley "top power brokers," by the National Law Journal as one of the 100 most influential attorneys in America, and by Forbes Magazine as one of the country's top private company investors ("Midas List").   Financial Engines is saddened by the loss of Craig in October 2009.