Vanni Treves

Vanni Emanuele Treves CBE (born 1940 in Florence, Italy) is a former Chairman of Channel 4, former Senior Partner of City law firm Macfarlanes and former Chairman (2001-2009) of Equitable Life. Treves is also the current Chairman of Intertek Group, Chairman of the National College for School Leadership, and a Vice Chairman of the NSPCC's FULL STOP campaign.

Treves' father was killed during the Second World War in 1944 and his mother remarried, hence the family relocated to Swiss Cottage in London. He won a scholarship to the independent St Paul's School in London before attending the University of Oxford to study jurisprudence. Treves later completed a Fulbright scholarship in the United States at the University of Illinois. He relinquished his dual Italian-British nationality at the age of 36 when he realised that it made him eligible for national service in the Italian Army.

Following his graduation from University College, 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 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.

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