Vincent Viola

Vincent “Vinnie” Viola is an American billionaire businessman, and U.S. Army veteran. He was for several weeks President Donald Trump‘s nominee for United States Secretary of the Army, before withdrawing from consideration.

• The son of a truck driver from Brooklyn, Vincent Viola started electronic-trading firm Virtu Financial in 2008 and took the company public in 2015.
• Market-maker Virtu completed a series of secondary offerings in May 2019 to help repurchase more than $500 million in stock from Viola.
• Viola splurged on real estate with stock sale proceeds, buying a beachfront Florida condo and spending $108 million on Arizona’s tallest skyscraper.
• Viola is the owner of the NHL Florida Panthers. He graduated from West Point in 1977 and New York Law School in 1983.
• In 2003 he founded the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point to provide education and research about global terrorism.