Vincent Tchenguiz, the British businessman, was born in Tehran in October of 1956. His Iraqi-Jewish family changed the family name from Khadouri to Tchenguiz when they left Iraq in 1948 to establish a new home in Iran. They left Iran in 1979 when the Shah fell. Vincent completed his schooling in Iran in 1973. He furthered his education with a Business Administration course at Boston University, and then in 1978, he earned both a BSc Honours degree in Economics and a BSc degree in Commerce from McGill University in Montreal. In 1980, Vincent went on to earn a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) from New York University. His education complete, Vincent worked for Prudential Bache in London as a Senior Vice President, trading financial instruments within the fund-management division. He moved on to Shearson Lehman Brothers’ London offices in 1986, filling a similar role in trading financial instruments as a Senior Vice President. Two years later, Vincent and his brother Robert began a commercial property venture known as Rotch Property Group; Vincent serves as both joint Chairman and joint Managing Director of the company.
2002 saw Vincent begin another business enterprise as Chairman of Consensus Business Group, which acts as the principal adviser to a family trust (which is its ultimate beneficial owner). Consensus provides advice on a portfolio that includes roughly £4.5 billion in both commercial properties and residential freeholds and another £200 million of investments in areas such as homeland security, clean technology, health care and holdings in funds. Vincent and the Tchenguiz Family Trust filed civil damage claims in both England and Iceland when Kaupthing, the Icelandic bank, failed in October of 2008. The combined claims totalled more than £1.5 billion.
March of 2011 found Vincent being arrested by the United Kingdom’s Serious Fraud Office as part of an investigation into Kaupthing’s collapse. He was released without charges on the same day. Kaupthing reached an out-of-court settlement with Vincent and the trust in September of 2011; the details of the settlement remain confidential. Vincent Tchenguiz lives in Mayfair, London. Unmarried, he also owns residences in Cape Town and St. Tropez, and he has a 130-foot Mangusta motor yacht moored on the French Riviera. The yacht’s name, Veni Vidi Vici, translates as “I came, I saw, I conquered.”