Dennis van Vugt (1971) studied
Business Economics at the university
in Tilburg (KUB).

In 1993 he joined Arthur Andersen's audit practice in Amsterdam, where he worked for over 6 years— of which the last two-and-a-half as audit manager.  

Besides performing and coordinating statutory audits, he spent a lot of time on special assignments such as due diligences, review engagements, and (from 1997 onwards) various equity offerings (including an IPO) and debt offerings for clients on the Dutch and US capital markets. These special assignments mostly related to clients in the telecommunications- and entertainment industry, in which Dennis specialised himself both through his client portfolio and through various courses and seminars. Dennis was also closely involved in the development and roll-out of a new risk-based audit methodology, called the Business Audit, and he attended several courses in the area of US GAAP, as well as a wide range of other courses in areas including but not limited to tax, treasury, and acquisitions. He became a Dutch CPA ("Registeraccountant") in 1996. 

In March 2000 Dennis joined chello broadband N.V., a company that offers broadband internet services via the cable networks of UPC.

As Financial Controller he was closely involved in the planned IPO for chello on Euronext (former AEX) and NASDAQ. Subsequently he was primarily involved in the due diligence, dealstructuring and the planned integration of chello with the international (non-US) division of Excite@Home. From November 2000 onwards Dennis was responsible for managing the financial functions for chello in Schiphol-Rijk, more specifically accounting, reporting, cash management, tax and (temporarily) human resources. In 2001 chello merged with UPC's media and tv-activities to become UPC Media. On August 1st 2001 Dennis was promoted to Vice-President Corporate Finance of UPC Media. 

On 1 March 2002 he started his own company, Defim, specialised in financial interim management and advice. In its first ten years of existence, Defim carried out more than twenty projects for some ten different customers in the Netherlands, France and Germany. For more information about the contents of these projects we refer to the "Defim's services" section of this website.

As of 1 November 2011,  Dennis has joined CBRE Global Investors as CFO/COO EMEA. CBRE Global Investors EMEA was established in 2011 as the merger company of the former CBRE Investors business in Europe and the UK and the former ING Real Estate Investment Management activities, the latter having been acquired from ING by CBRE at that time. In his role as CFO/COO EMEA, Dennis was a member of the European Executive Committee and (jointly) responsible for the team of 500+ investment professionals in Europe and the UK. The EMEA team has been managing between EUR 25-30 billion of Assets under Management during this period on behalf of large pension funds, insurance companies and other institutional investors in real estate, with transactional activity of EUR 4-8 billion per annum throughout the period. Dennis also was a permanent member of the EMEA Investment Committee, and in addition he was appointed as member of the Global Leadership Team of CBRE Global Investors from December 2013 onwards. During the five-year period, Dennis led the integration of the two formerly separate businesses and played an important role in transforming the business model away from the prior country-led model into a client-focused model catered for growth.

Dennis is married and lives in Amstelveen with his wife and two daughters.