Stragellan: Strategic geopolitical socio economic research: Prediction Markets, Global Expert Network, Stakeholder analysis.

Stragellan Profile: Background

Stragellan was founded in 2004 to fill a market niche as a strategic geopolitical and socio-economic research company. Clients have included large academic think tanks, hedge funds, private equity firms, as well as multinational companies.

Since 2004, Stragellan’s clients have benefited from a Global Expert Network database which houses thousands of issue experts located throughout Europe, Asia, the Mideast and the Americas. The network provides firsthand investment intelligence, primary-source corporate and industry research, and regional political and socio-economic stability reporting. Many of our analyses are produced in or near real time.

The name Stragellan is a combination of strategy, strategic with Magellan, the famous 16th century explorer who was the first to circumnavigate the globe. The international aspect combined with a strategic approach make a fitting name for Stragellan.

Founder and CEO of Stragellan BV is Aad J. van Kampen.

Stragellan employs a small and dedicated group of part time researchers and analysts who contribute to the design and execution of our projects. The staff includes economists, political science majors and sociologists. The research staff is managed by Senior Research Associate Roger Larssen who also oversees our projects. Anders Härdig is in charge of the current Lebanon Project.

Haroun Sherif and Marni Stevens are research assistants who assist in the management of our Global Expert Network and carry out the majority of quantitative data collections.

Like Stragellan itself, our staff is internationally oriented. We are fluent in the European languages, Arabic, Chinese and Farsi.

The most dangerous strategy
is to jump a chasm
in two leaps

Benjamin Disraeli

Aad J. van Kampen
Founder, CEO

The founder and CEO of Stragellan BV, Mr. van Kampen has extensive international business experience. After completing his education in the Netherlands, Mr. van Kampen worked for a wide variety of corporations in Europe and the U.S., making a career out of establishing and managing international business divisions and opening new markets.

Among others, Mr. van Kampen was the manager of International Business Programs at a U.S. biomedical company in the 1980s. Later he cofounded BioSpectives Ltd., a Luxembourg-based company that served as a connector for bioscientific researchers to multinational pharmaceutical companies in order to market niche research & development. He served as its Executive Vice President until the company was sold.
Since his early retirement in 2002, Mr. van Kampen has been a consultant and advisor to several multinationals, providing his expertise to give these corporations an understanding of the political, cultural and socio-economic challenges before making critical investment decisions.

Mr. van Kampen’s broad international exposure, coupled with his personal interest in geopolitical events, led him to establish Stragellan BV in 2004 to fill a market niche as a strategic geopolitical and socio-economic research company. Clients have included large academic think tanks, hedge funds, private equity firms, as well as multinational companies.
Over his career, Mr van Kampen has lived and worked in the U.S., Belgium, Luxembourg, and Saudi Arabia. He is married and has two grown children as well as one grandchild.

Anders Härdig
Lebanon Project Manager

Anders Härdig is a consultant with Fenova Consulting International (FCI), a Sweden-based consulting firm specializing in qualitative political analyses. He also is a Swedish Fulbright Fellow and has been a Ph.D. Candidate at American University’s School of International Service in Washington, D.C., since 2005.

Mr. Härdig received his B.A. and M.A. in Political Science from Linköping University in Sweden, including coursework completed at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. His primary geographical area of expertise is the Levant, where he has been a frequent guest both as a private visitor and a researcher, most recently in the summer of 2008 as a research affiliate at American University of Beirut’s Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies (CAMES) in Lebanon.
Mr. Härdig is working on a research project examining the relationship between Lebanon’s civil society and political system.

Prior to moving to Washington, Mr. Härdig worked on asylum issues regarding Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, and Gaza at the Swedish Migration Board.

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We closely monitored the takeover of a large European auto manufacturer by its much smaller joint venture partner. Our research focused on gaining an understanding of the exact stake the bidder company was pursuing and if it would gradually lead to a complete takeover (in this case more than 30.3% ownership would require a total takeover scenario according to local law).

Given the broad political and socio-economic implications of this takeover, we focused our collection on the broader picture, including political and public sentiment – locally as well as nationally – and the potential for organized labor to obstruct or sour the takeover deal. Our information was essential for helping our hedge fund client determine its ultimate position in the deal.

An Asian steel magnate’s hostile bid made for a European steel conglomerate prompted an emotional storm in the European steel industry. Fears that the European company would first be acquired and then subsequently disassembled for short-term gain by the new owners dominated the headlines for weeks.

Using our network of industry sources, we were able to determine that although the companies appeared at odds on the issue publicly, behind the scenes the major players were working toward an agreement on takeover terms. We reported the details of these behind-the-scenes negotiations to our client over a period of months. In the end, we were able to show convincingly that the merger would take indeed place and that it would yield positive results from an investment perspective.

An Asian steel magnate’s hostile bid made for a On behalf of a large international oil conglomerate, Stragellan investigated the potential for partial or complete nationalization of the oil & gas sector in a Latin American country.

During political campaigns held in the country several months before we began our project, a presidential candidate had promised to nationalize the industry if elected. When he won by a landslide, our client asked us to determine if the candidate’s campaign talk was mere rhetoric or if it represented his true intentions.

Through in-depth interviews with close associates of the president-elect (he had not yet been inaugurated) as well as industry insiders, politicians and opponents, we were able to develop a profile of the new leader that clearly showed that he would likely follow through with his election promise. We reported this finding to our client three months before the inauguration and provided clear value to our client’s investment strategy in the relevant country.

A large Think Tank has asked us to help measure (near real-time) political developments in a Mediterranean country so that it can methodically understand the processes that underlie decision making in that country, the way alliances are formed and maintained, and which political parties and figures are key to the country’s future.

We are using both qualitative (person-to-person interviews) and quantitative tools (SGN Surveys and Stragellan FM) in this ongoing project, which is part of a much larger and more comprehensive academic research project.

In another large academic project, taking place in an Asian country, the challenges to obtain qualitative and quantitative data were quite significant, because of an ongoing war and existing security issues. The task was to measure the way in which groups and individuals communicated with each other on the micro and macro levels to find consensus on a range of issues.

We used a cadre of experts inside the country as well as experts in our network in Europe, the US and in Asia. This project is ongoing in its second phase.