President-elect Donald Trump announced on Monday that he has picked the New York billionaire businessman Vincent Viola to be his secretary of the army.

Trump has appointed a number of billionaires to his cabinet, along with leading figures from the world of banking, prompting criticism from some quarters, given the success of a presidential campaign built around an appeal to working-class voters.

Prior to the appointment of Viola, 60, the net worth of Trump’s cabinet picks was reported to be around $14bn, making it the richest such group ever assembled.

The website Quartz reported that such a concentration of wealth was “more than that of the 43 million least wealthy American households combined – over one third of the 126 million households total in the US”.

Viola, known as Vinnie, is the founder of several businesses including Virtu Financial, an electronic trading firm. He also owns the NHL’s Florida Panthers and is a past chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX).

In a statement, Trump said Viola was “living proof of the American dream”, having grown up in a family of Italian immigrants in Brooklyn, where his father worked as a truck driver.

The statement also cited Viola’s leadership of NYMEX after the terrorist attacks of September 11, when his “heroic leadership served as a beacon to thousands of Exchange members and staff”.

Viola is a 1977 West Point graduate who trained as an airborne ranger infantry officer and served in the 101st Airborne Division.

He is also a graduate of New York Law School who in 2003 founded and helped fund the creation of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.

In August, he told Bloomberg News in a rare interview he had “tried to re-create … in my Wall Street experience” in his experience in the army, as a member of a division known as the Screaming Eagles.

Viola bought the Panthers for about $250m in 2013. Reported to be worth $1.8bn himself, he ranks No 374 on Forbes’ list of the 400 wealthiest people in the US.