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Malaysian business magnate
Vincent Tan Chee Yioun is a Malaysian business magnate and investor who is the founder and chairman of Berjaya Corporation, a diversified conglomerate listed on the Malaysian stock exchange. Besides holding stakes through the Berjaya Corporation group of companies, Tan's other stakes include interest in internet–related businesses, water utilities, media, retail and telecommunications.
Tan was born in Batu Pahat in 1952, and studied at Batu Pahat High School. He had originally planned to study law in New Zealand, but as his father's business was failing, he found work as a clerk in a bank instead. He then sold life insurance for AIA and became an agency manager for the company. Tan then started private companies in trading, credit, general insurance and real estate. He started a joint venture with Tokio Marine & Fire Insurance that became United Prime Insurance. In 1981, he won a McDonald's franchise in Malaysia, took an advance operations course at Hamburger University, and became the managing director of McDonald's Malaysia in 1982.
Tan is the founder of the Better Malaysia Foundation, which provides interest-free loans and scholarships to students in need. In 2011, he was featured on Forbes Asia's list of Heroes of Philanthropy due to his pledge to donate half his fortune to social causes. In 2017, Vincent Tan donated RM500,000 to Mercy Malaysia and Tzu Chi Malaysia, bringing the total sum of his donations to both organizations to RM7.6 million.
Biographical detail compiled from Wikipedia and Wikidata, which are edited openly and may be incomplete or out of date. Fleet data is our own. Source →
