Financial Engines

Dr. William F. Sharpe (Bill) is a recipient of the 1990 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, and has helped some of the nation's largest pension fund managers invest billions of dollars of retirement money. He started Financial Engines in 1996 when he realized that technology made it possible to offer the same sophisticated retirement help to individuals, regardless of their wealth or investment experience. Today, his revolutionary vision—to give everyone access to independent, high-quality investment advice—is a reality.  Bill is currently a Director Emeritus with Financial Engines.

Financial Engines combines Bill's pioneering investment methodology with proprietary technology to provide all investors with cost-effective, expert advice and management—the kind previously available only to the world's largest institutional investors.

As the STANCO 25 Professor of Finance, Emeritus at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, Bill's academic career included teaching at Stanford University, the University of Washington, and the University of California at Irvine. He is perhaps best known as one of the originators of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (used by economists to illustrate the relationship between investment risk and return in the pricing of securities) and for his development of the Sharpe Ratio for investment performance analysis, which bears his name. 

In addition to writing seven influential books on portfolio theory and investing, Bill has published articles in a number of professional journals, including Management Science, The Journal of Business, The Journal of Finance, The Journal of Financial Economics, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, The Journal of Portfolio Management, and The Financial Analysts' Journal.

He is also the 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.