Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao: Vietnam’s airline billionaire rides high

Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao first spotted business opportunities in the former Soviet Union. Now she is Vietnam’s first and only female billionaire. Here in the UK, she has sparked controversy.

Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao
(Image credit: © Linh Luong Thai/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Another year, another endowment row at Oxford University. But while the question of whether to accept the fascist-tainted Mosley millions continues to divide dons, a quiet revolution has taken place at Linacre College. Following a £155m “transformative donation” from the Vietnamese tycoon Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao – the country’s first and only female billionaire – the institution has voted to rename itself Thao College.

An entrepreneur in the USSR

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.