Destination Strategies’ Managing Director Dan Nicholls is a Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) specialist and published author, with nineteen years of experience working in twenty countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Since January 2017 he has been retained as a Senior Investment Promotion Consultant with the World Bank Group, implementing FDI sector prioritization, strategy development, institutional reform and capacity-building projects in Sri Lanka, India, Mongolia, South Africa, Azerbaijan, Malaysia and Ethiopia. He has also recently provided consultancy services to national and regional clients in the UK, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia. He has also delivered for other clients in Vietnam and Pakistan.
Much of Dan’s work has been in ASEAN’s largest economy, Indonesia. He has been leading investment-focused workstreams in Indonesia for more than a decade - initially for the EU-Indonesia Trade Cooperation Facility (2013-2016). As part of this project, he was based in Indonesia for two years as Key Expert for Investment, where established and led the EU Desk team at the Indonesia Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM). The EU Desk promotes and facilitates European FDI into Indonesia, working with BKPM’s own officers, delivering on-the-job capacity building. During Dan's tenure at BKPM from 2014-2016, more than 170 European businesses were assisted by the EU Desk, and US$760 million in European investment commitments were made by EU Desk client companies.
More recently, Dan led the Investment Planning and Policymaking workstream under the ARISE+ Indonesia Trade Support Facility (2019-2024). He worked with key Indonesian Government entities, including the National Development Planning Ministry (BAPPENAS), the Ministry of Investment/BKPM and the Ministry of Trade. The role combined leading and delivering technical inputs, alongside managing the work of experts and contracted organisations
Dan is an experienced speaker, having moderated and facilitated business roundtables that have included ministers and CEOs, as well as forums on key aspects of investment policy, such as market access and foreign labour regulations. In 2018, he was a panelist alongside the President of Mongolia during an agribusiness round-table at the Mongolian Economic Forum.
Dan has also worked for the economic development advisory firm OCO Global, the investment promotion agencies of Uzbekistan, The Gambia, Latvia, Liverpool, Cardiff and Birmingham, as well as international organisations like the Islamic Development Bank, the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). He has also worked with the Government of Abu Dhabi, as well as the global communications consultancies Hill & Knowlton (a WPP company) and Grayling.
Dan’s first book, Foreign Direct Investment: Smart Approaches to Differentiation and Engagement, was published by Routledge in the UK and the USA in 2012, while he has also been a contributing writer and awards judge for publications such as the Financial Times’ fDi Intelligence.
Dan has previously been a Fellow of the Institute of Place Management (F.I.P.M.) at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK.