Vanni Emanuele Treves

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(1940 – 10 November 2019) was a British business executive. He was Chairman of

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a four ...

(1998–2003), a senior partner of

City A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

law firm Macfarlanes, and Chairman (2001–2009) of Equitable Life.

Early life and education

Treves was born in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

, Italy in 1940. His father was killed during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

in 1944 and his mother remarried, after which the family relocated to

Swiss Cottage Swiss Cottage is an area of Hampstead in the London Borough of Camden, England. It is centred on the junction of Avenue Road and Finchley Road and includes Swiss Cottage tube station. Swiss Cottage lies north-northwest of Charing Cross. The ...

in London. He won a scholarship to the independent St Paul's School, London, before attending the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

to study

jurisprudence Jurisprudence, or legal theory, is the theoretical study of the propriety of law. Scholars of jurisprudence seek to explain the nature of law in its most general form and they also seek to achieve a deeper understanding of legal reasoning a ...

. Treves later completed a

Fulbright scholarship The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

in the United States at the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...

. He relinquished his dual Italian-British nationality at the age of 36 when he realised that it made him eligible for

national service National service is the system of voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term ''national service'' comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939. The l ...

in the

Italian Army "The safeguard of the republic shall be the supreme law" , colors = , colors_labels = , march = ''Parata d'Eroi'' ("Heroes's parade") by Francesco Pellegrino, ''4 Maggio'' (May 4) ...

Career

Following his graduation from Oxford, Treves joined Macfarlanes in 1963 and went on to become a specialist in corporate governance. It was this that led to his appointment as a non-executive director of

Saatchi & Saatchi Saatchi & Saatchi is a British multinational communications and advertising agency network with 114 offices in 76 countries and over 6,500 staff. It was founded in 1970 and is currently headquartered in London. The parent company of the agency gr ...

in 1987. During the 1990s he went on to develop a career, as Philip Inman puts it, as a "serial chairman." In 2001 he took up the chairmanship of Equitable Life, determined to resolve its troubles. Treves was appointed

Commander of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(CBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to education (as chair of the

National College for School Leadership The National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) (inheritor of the site and functions of the National College for School Leadership (NCSL)) was an executive agency of the Department for Education (a United Kingdom Government Ministry wh ...

Personal life

Treves was married with two sons and a daughter. He was a donor to the Labour Party. He authored "What life after retirement from the law?," which was published in ''The Times'' on 4 April 2013.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Treves, Vanni 1940 births 2019 deaths Alumni of University College, Oxford British solicitors British television executives Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Italian emigrants to the United Kingdom National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children people People educated at St Paul's School, London University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni Chairmen of Channel 4 Businesspeople from Florence