Vincent Tan

Vincent Tan (born 23 February 1952) is a Malaysian business magnate and investor of Chinese descent, the founder and chairman of Berjaya Corporation, one of Malaysia's largest conglomerates. From a start as a bank clerk and insurance salesman he won the McDonald's franchise for Malaysia in 1981, built Berjaya across gaming, property, food and telecommunications, and became a major figure in football as owner of Cardiff City, FK Sarajevo and KV Kortrijk ^{1 2}.

Tan was born on 23 February 1952 at Batu Pahat in Johor — the Arabic article gives 3 March 1952 instead, a divergence the record notes and does not follow — and has worked in business since his teens. From 1967 to 1972 he was a clerk at the Commerce International Merchant Bank in Kuala Lumpur, and from 1973 to 1977 an agent, then Agency Manager, at American International Assurance, before turning to direct sales and the building of his own group ^{1 3}.

In 1981 Tan secured the McDonald's franchise for Malaysia, the foundation of his fortune. Through Berjaya he built positions in Sports Toto, property development, food and beverage, telecommunications and stockbroking, and Berjaya Land made headline land sales in South Korea and Japan. In football he bought Cardiff City in 2010 — presiding over the club's 2013 promotion to the Premier League and the long dispute over its rebranding from blue to red — and later owned FK Sarajevo and Belgium's KV Kortrijk ¹. In philanthropy he founded the Better Malaysia Foundation in 2010 to support education and medical care, and donated to Mercy Malaysia and to Tzu Chi Malaysia ¹. No text read names a faith for Tan himself — his giving to a Buddhist charity is documented activity, not an attestation — so his faith is recorded as unknown ^{1 2}.

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