Maybe because my family had grounded in me a deep love of the country and a deep love of service to the country, I saw through that. Its very hard to come here and notleave not having a selfless sense of what duty means, what honor is, and the importance of your country. FloridaPanthers.com is the official Web site of the Florida Panthers. In 2017, a buyer was in contract to buy the home from Viola for $80 million, The Real . And it was interesting, because again, that exercise was going on. And look at me, actually, instead of at the camera. The company that I was a member inas Im sure you knowafter Beast Barracks you are assigned to a company in one of the four regiments. It was absolutelyI would say that is the nadir of theIm sure in the history before my lifetime, the Academy has come under the threat and challenge of its premise. And you walk into Wall Street, and suddenly it is an environment you can recognizeit seems familiar to you. So as would follow, the qualifications of my class were not as high as classes before and classes after. In 1983, he graduated from New York Law School with a juris doctor degree. Wonder when the last time the Panthers wrote Broward a rent check? They lived in a one-room house. Now, whyd you get out of the Army? In 1987, he founded Pioneer Futures, one of the top fifty futures commission merchants in the US. Yeah. Viola has stacked Virtus Board with family, friends and longtime business associates.. Absolutelyyeah, it did. Did you ever find yourselfeither because of the rigor of the training or because the temptations from the outside world or because of, perhaps, disappointment in your own class over this scandalthat you really wanted out? The Brooklyn Heights home of billionaire Vincent Viola and his wife, Teresa, sold for $25.5 million in a deal that went through on Christmas Eve, according to public records. Did it look to you at all, though, like the kids, guys back at home your age who were doing the drugs, were having more fun than you did? Virtu obscures its public financial reporting by providing only consolidated financial information. Douglas A. Cifu - Vice Chairman, Partner & Alternate Governor. So that was sort of the lowest quiz or take-home exam you could have. My company was very unique, and Im sure there were others like thisI dont have statistics on thisbut we were what you called a sort of gray company. (Getty) The 59-year-old Viola is currently ranked #474 on the Forbes 400 list and is ranked #338 among billionaires in the U.S. My dad was a combat support officer. We had a gentleman who was a war hero. He actually commanded the forces during an operation up in the central highlands near the Cambodian and Laos borderit was 197071called Operation Ripcord. And I remember the impact it had on his family, especially his dad, who served so honorably in World War II. [3] Viola is the owner of the Florida Panthers, a National Hockey League (NHL) ice hockey team. Mobile Experiences For Businesses: How To Boost Accessibility And Revenue, San Francisco 49ers Salary Cap Situation And Finances Heading Into NFL Free Agency, Vincent Lo Plays Long Game With His Shui On Group, Making Big Bets In Shanghai Property As He Prepares Daughter Stephanie As Successor. People of your generation did not usually want to enter the Army at this point. Vincent "Vinnie" Viola (born 1956) is an American billionaire businessman and U.S. Army veteran. A graduate of the U.S. Army Ranger school, he served in the 101st Airborne Division and later attained the rank of Major in the Army Reserves. I guess thats where success on the battlefield really stems fromthis almost deep well of unassumed courage and unassumed dedication to your soldiers. So what class are you, did you graduate with here at West Point? My mom had two of her brothers and five nephews in combat. One was the cadets who were completely indignant, and almost felt they should be able to cheat, and were very reactive to the potential that they could be thrown out for an honor scandal which was and should be the standardstarted to agitate, basically against the whole surety of the honor code as it was being practiced. I remained a reserve officer for the next 13 years, and I always stoodI try to remain current as far as my officership, and in contact with classmates and other soldiers. Thats my first memory of the honor scandal. I can tell you that a vast majorityif almost every one of my professors that were uniformed here, and when I was a cadet, I dare say that seemed like 95 percent of the staffwere combat veterans. Did you havedid your family have an Army background at all? What did you go to do after you left? Of all the locations this generational defender was expected to choose next on his managerial journey, a stint at a freshly relegated Lancastrian club was not on the list. And I remember reading an article in the daily news about the landing of the Marines in Vietnam, and even as a young person, sensing that this wasnt as grand a mission set as maybe World War II was. And the academy was a place where those inputs werent really defining the environment. So I was experiencingI dont want to paint the picture like we felt estranged here. Box 23763 What happens during said surgery will impact San Francisco's offseason plans. Public shareholders own whats known as Class A shares in Virtu. It was very fascinating, and I could actually say, for me, it was quiteI was self-aware of it, because the academymy classI think this can be documented. Spring through Firstyeah. How much revenue does Broward County get from non-hockey events and what do the Panthers get for non-hockey events? Donald Trump appointed Viola to be Secretary of the Army in December 2016 but This is very, very unique. He was for several weeks President Donald Trump 's nominee for United States Secretary of the Army, before withdrawing from consideration. Former President Trump nominated Vincent Viola to become Secretary of the Army in 2017. Well, of course, as a young man, you yearn for it to be a chivalrous and successful national mission and national adventure. So the investigation goes on sort of in the Spring semester of the Cow Year. Under his leadership, the Panthers have continued to further these efforts both on and off the ice, including the revitalization of Fort Lauderdale's historic War Memorial Auditorium and construction of a two-sheet team practice and community ice facility-the Baptist Health IcePlex-which will host an array of community hockey and skating programs and increase access to the sport of hockey to thousands of tri-county residents. We came from a civilian world that had undergone enormous social disruption. Now, the honor code says not only not to tolerate lying, cheating, or stealing, butor does it say something to the effect of or knowledge of?. Because now it had elevated past the control of the Corps, and it became a challenge to the administration of the Academy. Donald Trumps real net worth? But I do want to make one point about what the Academy was like. Some of the cadets that were indictedif I dare say that wordwere indignant. All Rights Reserved. Did you think you would be going to Vietnam when you entered here? March 23, 2021 11:15 AM. And I remember hearing later that the people were called out of formation, because they were informed that they were under an honor investigation for an exercise, a take-home exercise that we had in electrical engineering. Mr. Viola, 62, bought the property on East 69th Street and Fifth Avenue in 2005 for $20 million, according to PropertyShark records. How does that happen here? He was for several weeks President Donald Trump's nominee for United States Secretary of the Army, before withdrawing from consideration. The suit asks a judge to force the company, Virtu Financial Inc., to produce its books and records for inspection by the plaintiff the pension fund of Toledo, Ohios Iron Workers Local No. I distinctly remember that. He received his juris doctor degree from New York Law School in June 1983,[1][12][13] but did not complete the bar exam. WASHINGTON Vincent Viola, the billionaire Wall Street trader Donald J. Trump has nominated to be the secretary of the Army, was accused in August of punching a concessions . I joined the crowd. Viola, former chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange and owner of the Florida Panthers professional ice hockey team, hopes to multiply his money several times on the historic home he. We had war heroes. A few had very committed, intellectually grounded reasons for participating in these protests. Most persons had been introduced at some point to drug usedrinking was very, very accepted. From West Point To Middle School: Continuing Service To The Nation, The F As A Badge Of Honor: Surviving The Class Of 77 Honor Scandal, Learning through Failure, Toward Greater Challenge: Self-Discipline, The Key. Mr. Viola is one of the nation's foremost leaders in electronic trading. She didnt have any skills, per se, except to be a housewife. It absolutely did, and as it, thankfully, always does, the Academy and itsthe accommodation of its Spartan core and Athenian, almost, force, or pilot flame, is almost this intellectual curiosity that must exist here and does, always lags and doesnt react as broadly, deeply, or as quickly. dchristensen@floridabulldog.org What occurred next was extremely, extremethis is my perspective, of coursebut extremely instructional. Exactlywouldve shifted, then, before you actually completed your. You felt that from the first day, because it wasthe first day is transformational. When General Goodpaster comes back, is that right? And that stuck with mesort of confirmed for me that the military was an honorable profession. He previously served as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Virtu Financial and its predecessors since April 2008. Im sure that Spring of 1976 through the Spring of 1977 was one of those periods. He took it public in an initial public offering (IPO) in 2015 using a so-called umbrella partnership corporate, or Up-C, structure in which a newly created shell company, Virtu Financial Inc., became the parent whose principal asset is shares of the underlying operating company, Virtu LLC. And I was never called for even a drill roll check, nor were any persons in my company. In December . I mean even those whocertainly those who actually did it must have, but did the rest of the class feel tainted by this? Viola is a. And of course, my class suffered the honor scandal of 1976. And I rememberand we had to recite, every day, in most classesparticularly mathematics, where we would take positions at our blackboards and solve a problem, and then brief on that problem. [6][7][8] His father, an immigrant from Italy, worked as a truck driver after serving in the U.S. Army in the European theater of WWII. We only knew we wanted to serve our country. (Page 2) Vincent Viola is our Founder and has served as our Executive Chairman since November 2013. Most all of themI dont remember any that wasnt. The mansion has bounced on and off the market since 2013. And every time I went home, until my first class year, just because we could go home in civilian clothes, and it was easier, I would go home in uniform, and I was always heralded. "From the first day at West Point, my focus and purpose was about selfless leadership, putting others before yourself and being ready to sacrifice for others so that the mission and the goal would be accomplished.". Its the same thing herethis is extremelyin the end its a very insulated, but positively reaffirming, environment. Mr. Viola is one of the nation's foremost leaders in electronic trading. And its a very grave, simple, but singular point in which your responsibility to duty and your understanding of it intercedes with your desire to take it on. Well, what I remember of it is interesting, because there are very stark, deeply, almost burnt memories and images of it. [14] Prior to and following the Gulf War, Viola earned millions of dollars betting on oil prices. New York City quietly, socially, is a very conservative place, so if Id go out in uniform to a bar anywhere in the city, most of the persons in bars or in points of culture, even at those points, in those years were somewhat older, born of the Korean War or World War II generation. And my dad received a V letter from my grandfather, commanding him, basically as strong Italian fathers will do to their sons, that he must go visit his relatives in the village where my dad was actually born. And I had a few friends from other companies that were in there. Photo by Eliot J. Schechter/NHLI via Getty Images. P.O. And my dad tells a story that the captain said to himmy grandfather did mention that they were starving. 2023 Forbes Media LLC. My mothers first advice when I told her I was going to get out of the Army, she said, You need to take the civil service test for different positions in New York City, which I thought a little bit about. In the book, Lou Guttman, the previous chairman at the New York Mercantile Exchange, said Viola "exuded leadership. Runnersrunners and clerks, and my neighborhood had a good amount of runners and low-level Wall Street professionals. What was it like to be here in the period immediately after the end of the Vietnam War? You have an event that calls to question whether or not there was an honor violation, and you have what is a pre-honor committee hearingalmost grand jury-type mechanismwhere cadets decide, after speaking to the cadets involved in the potential violation, whether or not there is enough doubt or evidence to bring it to a full honor committee, so all of the due process had to be protected. A life-long horse racing enthusiast and owner of St. Elias Stables, Mr. Viola owns the 2017 Kentucky Derby and Florida Derby-winning horse, Always Dreaming, and the 2019 Breeder's Cup Classic winner, Vino Rosso. The billionaire owner of the Florida Panthers hockey team, Vincent Viola, is at the center of a Delaware lawsuit that alleges he's used his control of a large publicly traded financial services company to improperly divert hundreds of millions of dollars to himself, his family and his cronies. Did your class feel shamed by this, you think? [2] He is the former chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange , and the founder and chairman of Virtu Financial. VIOLA, VINCENT 69 of East Greenwich, passed away May 3, 2013 at Rhode Island Hospital. Well, the Academy had a duty to then examine and investigate every one of those charges or derivative of accusations. Viola especially emphasizes the lifelong importance of his training at West Point for the military and civilian world. They had been in companies that basically had been very, very broad in its definition of honor. It borders on failure or guiltyyou feel like I let down my central purpose, you know. Cause she wanted you to have another skill. But what it was like was, again, a very Spartan environment, and Im sure the differenceor as I like to say, the arbitragebetween what life was in the civilian world for entering cadets on July 2, 1973 and life at the academy, Im sure that difference was in fewer times in our nations history larger, because the society had undergone a social revolution. 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. Did you knowyou mustve known some of the cadets that were involved with this. My dad hadnt been there since. Of course, it also dovetailed with the larger story going on outside of the Academy. So my class and my company of A4 did not have one persons paper questioned, so we were almost in this kind of vacuum. You cannot help but that feeling. He had commanded a brigade in the combat organization of the 101st Airborne Division during the conduct of that battle. That date might be wrong, but I think the armistice peace treaty was signed January of 1973so everyone in the class had applied with the foreknowledge that we were a nation at war, and yet before we entered, it was a nation now post-war. But you were there, though, at sort of the cross, it seems to me, between the heroic stories of World War II, And then the intersection of that with the very non-heroic stories of Vietnam. And from the first day I entered the trading floor, I couldnt believe it, because it had many of the physical characteristics of being around a platoon environment. Do you think that there was the feeling, anywhere in the Armyin the leadership or among other alumni and classes, that, as you referred to before, that the standards may have lowered in admitting your class? You wanted to be that guy. Military Times reported that Viola had been searching for ways to divest from his business ventures, including transferring ownership of the Florida Panthers to his family members and transferring responsibility for operations to Vice Chairman Douglas Cifu. And I think that proves in the military service, I mean I think if theres ever been a period where the Academys value to the nation should be celebrated and demonstrated, its the post-Vietnam era til today. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Mr. Viola is a graduate of Brooklyn Technical School and the U. S. Military Academy at West Point. And individual companies had distinct ethos, because back in those days, as I remember, you stood with the same company, as far as I knew, the whole four years. $2.5 billion, according to our most recent tally. And I remember more than a handful of my mathematics professors finishing the work with the boards with 15, 20, 25 minutes left in the class and describing a combat experience. So when you would ask my dad, What are you, he probably would say, Im a male, husband, father, American, Catholic, or Catholic, American.. But then I think Id love to pick up on it again, Because you said this at the beginning, and I think its really important to get you to talk about it a little bit morethat in a sense, the framework that you learned here. You come here, and its interesting because society was just integrating, and internalizing the disruption that it experienced from the middle of the Vietnam War until its end. 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. Yeah. And now you had groups who wanted to make sure that civil liberties and personal liberties were not violatedin fact, I think the ACLU mightve gotten involvedand then the civilian lawyers who got involved to represent these cadets. So I distinctly remember sophomore year of high school, there was a very spontaneous antiwar demonstration, and there was a small group of us that basically picked up flags in the hallway of the high school and went outside and carried the flags and raised the flags. The upper classes led the military formation of the cadets as much as the staff here, so its a very unique environment. Five years. I remember as a young man unrealistically wanting to go to Vietnam. I think the exercise was handed in over the holiday period of 19. Now, where were you coming fromwhere did you grow up? Never wanted out. West Point had not undergone a social revolution, for obvious purposes. She and her husband also own St. Elias Stables, based in New York City. I basically was torn. The home is held in the name of a Delaware corporation using the propertys address. The Ft L Commissioners lead by Dean to be honest, WERE STAR STRUCK BY PANTHERS LOBBYISTS CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS, but as a Commissioner said to me privately after I protested the proposed deal, Who cares what we do? (except the lobbyists)? [5], Early life, education and military service, "Five Things To Know About Vincent Viola, Trump's Billionaire Pick For Army Secretary", "Vincent Viola, Founder and Executive Chairman, Virtu Financial", "Vincent Viola Becomes Owner Of The Florida Panthers", "Always Dreaming wins the 143rd Kentucky Derby", "New York businessman leading group purchasing Florida Panthers", "Donald Trump Selects Trading Firm Founder Vincent Viola as Army Secretary", "USMA Class of 1977: The Honor Scandal and Beyond", "All the ways Trump is having an impact on the sports world", "Vincent J. Viola: Executive Profile & Biography", "Virtu Never Loses (Well, Almost Never) in Quest to Upend Markets", "Virtu Financial Announces Pricing of Initial Public Offering (NASDAQ:VIRT)", "Trump picks businessman Viola as Army secretary", "Mattis, Trump team clashed over Pentagon appointment", "Trump's pick for Army Secretary drops out", "Vincent Viola, Billionaire Businessman, Is Trump's Choice to Lead the Army", "Army veteran Vincent Viola, billionaire owner of the Florida Panthers, named Trump's Army secretary", "How West Point is becoming a proving ground for technology", "Epic and Epically Opulent Manhattan Townhouse Listed for $114+ Million", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vincent_Viola&oldid=1135074740, This page was last edited on 22 January 2023, at 13:48. May 3, 2013 at Rhode Island Hospital coursebut extremely instructional served as Executive... Known as class a shares in Virtu impact San Francisco 's offseason plans top fifty Futures merchants! 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