How Cardiff City's owner Vincent Tan created a net worth of £562 million | OneFootball

FLW looks at how controversial Cardiff City owner Vincent Tan accumulated his vast wealth

Vincent Tan has become one of the more notorious figures in English football across his 14-year reign as Cardiff City owner.

The Malaysian businessman took over the Bluebirds all the way back in 2010, and it has been a rollercoaster ride ever since.

His ownership has not been without controversy and division, both of which most notably came when he elected to change the club's iconic blue home strip to red - a lucky colour in his native Malaysia - in 2011, prompting understandable protests and even boycotts from supporters.

Cardiff gained their first ever Premier League promotion in red, but, in the eyes of the club's faithful fans, it soured the achievement and their brief stay in the promised land was tainted by controversy and disarray.

He eventually changed them back to blue, although the badge still features a dragon to this very day and the stadium has red seats too, two things which have simply never sat right with most supporters.

Meanwhile, Tan's reluctance to hire a director of football while conducting an extremely high managerial turnover amid continued struggles on and off the pitch has been perhaps his strongest criticism in more recent times, but few can argue with the investment he has plowed into the club.

With that in mind, Football League World looks at how he accumulated his significant net worth.

Vincent Tan's reported net worth

The Cardiff City owner's net worth sits above £500m

According to Forbes, Tan currently has an estimated net worth of $730 million, which works out to around £562 million.

Tan is incredibly wealthy, although it is worth noting that his current estimated net worth is more than a 50 percent drop from his highest net worth of $1.6 billion (£1.27 billion) in 2015.

That deterioration can likely be attributed, in part, to the COVID-19 pandemic, which reportedly had significant financial detriments to his business empire and naturally restricted Cardiff's spending for quite some time, too. Indeed, Tan himself confirmed that he has taken more than £200 million out of his pocket to invest in Cardiff during a rare interview with WalesOnline back in 2022.

How Vincent Tan created a net worth of £580m

From insurance to Cardiff

Tan certainly had to bide his time before being able to pull off the purchase of Cardiff, which is said to have cost him £6 million in buying more than 35 percent of the club's shares.

He started off as an insurance agent in his homeland before getting the ball rolling on his business career at the age of 28, back in 1982. Tan made his breakthrough by investing in a McDonald's franchise, the first restaurant of its kind to open in Malaysia.

He quickly became the managing director of McDonald's in Malaysia, laying the gauntlet for a hugely successful career in the business world.

In 1984, Tan purchased a stake in the Berjaya Corporation and then bought 51 percent of Sports Toto, swapping those shares for a controlling stake in Berjaya. Berjaya blossomed as a company following Tan's purchase, and he expanded them tenfold.

The company now has an annual revenue of £1.6 billion, which Tan can take immense credit for. The growth of Berjaya went in tandem with his own exponential rise as a prosperous and successful businessman, eventually allowing him to enter football ownership for the first time by taking over Cardiff fourteen years ago.