Etienne de Villiers

De Villiers is the current chairman of DataEQ, an opinion-mining technology firm. He is also an investor in the firm. DataEQ uses AI algorithms and crowd-sourcing to assess public opinion expressed online. It accurately predicted the results of the 2016 Brexit vote and Donald Trump's 2016 Presidential election victory.

In 2009 De Villiers was asked by his former business partner Lalit Modi to assume ultimate responsibility for promoting the 2009 Indian Premier League in its last-minute switch to South Africa. The IPL was moved less than a month before opening ceremonies were due to begin, following terrorist attacks in India. At the time Modi was quoted as saying: "It's taken South Africa eight years to get ready for the 2010 soccer World Cup. We've had 29 days". Moving host nations is reported to have required the short-notice booking of 59 matches in 8 South African stadia, as well as 10,000 air tickets and 30,000 hotel rooms.

In October 2009 de Villiers was appointed chairman of the Virgin Racing F1 team. He resigned upon the team's sale to Marussia in December 2011.

De Villiers fulfilled his three-year contract with the ATP in December 2008.

In March 2008, 20 ATP players signed a letter to the ATP Board of Directors to the effect that De Villiers' contract should not be renewed until other candidates were interviewed for the position. Other players were more approving. In a 2007 Inside Tennis interview, doubles player Mike Bryan said of De Villiers: "[he] might make a couple of bad calls, but in general the guy's a genius".

Separately, in 2007 several players reported being approached by illegal gambling rings offering money to fix matches. The ATP's subsequent investigation found some players had gambled in contravention of the ATP's rules. Although none had bet on their own matches, five players were fined and suspended. The much-publicised Davydenko-Argüello match in Sopot, where Betfair suspended betting after a series of highly unusual bets, prompted a rethink in the sport. De Villiers initiated an independent review to investigate whether corruption was systemic within the game. The report called for the establishment of a tennis-wide anti corruption unit, a recommendation that led to the Tennis Integrity Unit, a joint initiative by the ATP, ITF, WTA and the Grand Slam committee. In a 2007 interview with the New York Times, De Villiers said: "We can't possibly stop our athletes being approached [by illegal gambling rings]. We can't have all of our 700 or 800 athletes with bodyguards, but what we can do is educate them on their responsibilities when they are approached and the consequences of not behaving appropriately."

In September 2005 De Villiers was appointed chairman of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), the governing body of the men's professional tennis circuit. De Villiers was given a brief to modernise men's tennis, a sport that many commentators believed to have grown stagnant and balkanized.

De Villiers was chairman of the BBC's commercial holdings board, including BBC Worldwide, from 2005 to 2009. In de Villiers' last year as chairman the organisation announced revenues exceeding £1 billion for 2008/2009. In 2007/08, BBC Worldwide reported profits of £120m, up three-fold on 2004/05, with much of the increase coming from international expansion and new businesses.

De Villiers cofounded private equity vehicle Englefield Capital, whose main investor was the Dutch Brenninkmeijer family. Englefield raised its debut fund of €730m in May 2003.

De Villiers asked François Pienaar to lend his support. The endorsement of the talismanic South African 1995 Rugby World Cup captain is credited with sparking interest in the IPL among South African fans, many of whom had never heard of the visiting Indian city-teams. The Times of India reported that the South African IPL tour did much to boost racial integration and presented South Africa as the perfect sporting destination. Citing the IPL's positive reviews, the Times called the South African tour "a successful experiment in atypical globalization ... where the West has to look to the East".

In 1986 de Villiers joined the Walt Disney company, where he managed Disney's television activities worldwide. He went on to become head of Disney in Europe, including its theme parks, stores and home entertainment, with the international TV business growing from $15m to $1bn during his tenure, and from six employees to 700.

In 1984 De Villiers was hired by Sol Kerzner to become CEO of Satbel, the South African entertainment conglomerate and operator of South Africa's largest cinema chain, Ster-Kinekor.

After graduating with a civil engineering degree from the University of Pretoria, DeVilliers received a Rhodes scholarship and read PPE at Oxford University. Following stints in engineering roles, in 1979 he joined management consultancy firm McKinsey & Company, where he was influenced by colleagues Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, authors of In Search of Excellence.