City profiles

Jan Marsalek

Some 18 months after Wirecard, Germany’s biggest fintech, imploded, there is still no sign of former COO, Jan Marsalek, who escaped on a private jet to Minsk when the fraud was exposed. Yet the mysterious Viennese executive continues to cast a long shadow, says Sam Jones in the FT. Marsalek, 41, combined his “corporate responsibilities” with “a web of geopolitical interests”: he also has links with the farright Austrian Freedom party and is under investigation for “connections to Russian spymasters”. It now emerges that his contacts included a senior Austrian military official and a top diplomat; both have now left their posts. The Austrian government is struggling to restore the trust of EU allies as a security and intelligence partner. Wherever he is, Marsalek isn’t helping.

Nguyen Thi Phi Phuong Thao

“I’ve always aimed big,” says the Vietnamese entrepreneur behind VietJet Air, one of the region’s fastestgrowing budget carriers. And “Madam Thao”, as she’s known, has proved true to her word, says The Guardian. Her transformative £155m donation to Oxford University’s Linacre College – the largest the university has ever received – has led Linacre to rename itself Thao College. Not everyone’s happy, but the connection with Vietnam’s first and only female billionaire could prove inspirational to the student body. Considered a brilliant student, Thao, now 51, was shipped off to study in Moscow, where she made her mark importing latex rubber and fax machines from Vietnam. “Before she’d turned 21 – or graduated – she’d made her first million.”