Brand Finance Nation Brands Forum 2015

David is the Chairman and CEO of Brand Finance Plc – the world’s leading brand valuation consultancy. He has worked in the area of branded business, brand, and intangible asset valuation since 1991. He specialised entirely in the field after becoming the Director of Brand Valuation for Interbrand in 1995. He subsequently left Interbrand in 1996 to launch Brand Finance which is celebrating 25 years in business this year.

David represented the British Standards Institution in the working parties responsible for crafting international industry standards: ISO 10668 on Brand Valuation in 2010 and ISO 20671 on Brand Evaluation in 2019.

David is a passionate writer and has authored many articles on brand valuation, published in numerous marketing and finance newspapers and magazines, such as: Financial Times, Accountancy Age, and Marketing Week. He has also lectured on the topic of brand valuation for Harvard, Chicago, and London Business Schools.

David graduated from Bristol University with an English degree, qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Price Waterhouse in London, and obtained a postgraduate diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM). He is a Fellow of The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and has a practising certificate with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW).

In 2005, he joined the Ministry of Economy. Having worked on standards and trade including the technical harmonisation of the Turkish telecommunications sector with the EU and bilateral and multilateral commercial relations, he was appointed as the Chief of Cabinet to the Undersecretary in 2011. Since he took office in London in August 2014, he has been responsible for trade and investment relations between Turkey and the UK.

Mr. Goksu holds a B.A. in International Relations from Ankara University and an MPA from Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs at Princeton University.

Born in Waterford, Ireland in April 1955, Daniel Mulhall joined the Department of Foreign Affairs of Ireland in 1978 and has held positions in the Department’s Economic, Political, Development Cooperation and Press Sections. He has had diplomatic postings in New Delhi, Vienna, Brussels (EU), Edinburgh (Consul General of Ireland in Scotland).

Between 2001 and 2005, he was Ireland’s Ambassador to Malaysia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. In August 2005, he was appointed Director-General of the European Union Division at the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin. Prior to his appointment in London he was Ireland’s Ambassador in Berlin between 2009 and 2013.

Among his interests are Irish history and literature, on which he has published many articles and a book, A New Day Dawning: a Portrait of Ireland in 1900 (Cork, 1999).

Courtney Fingar is a leading expert on foreign direct investment (FDI) and a business editor with more than 20 years of media experience.

She has covered business stories in all major regions of the world and has been on assignment to more than 80 countries, interviewing heads of state and government ministers as well as business leaders. She has appeared on television and radio in dozens of countries as a commentator and has twice been called to give evidence to the UK Parliament about inward investment.

An in-demand moderator, master of ceremonies and keynote speaker, Ms Fingar has participated in hundreds of business events globally and advises event organisers on content and strategy.

In early 2023, she set up Fingar Direct Investment, a boutique consultancy advising governments on investment promotion, location marketing and content creation and private-sector clients on strategic communications and media relations. She also serves as senior advisor for the World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies, and is a member of the advisory board of the Global Chamber. She previously served as the editor-in-chief of Investment Monitor, a digital publication focused on cross-border investment, and before that spent 15 years with the Financial Times where she ran the group’s specialist FDI publication.

Ms Fingar has a BA in journalism from the University of Alabama in the United States and an MSc in International and European Politics from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Nicholas C. Niggli currently heads the Economic, Finance, Science and Innovation Section at the Embassy of Switzerland in the UK and serves as Chairman of the Association of Economic Representatives in London (AERL – aerlondon.org.uk), the capital’s premier diplomatic network for economic and commercial attachés. In parallel, Nicholas lectures on policy making, global governance, leadership and negotiation dynamics at the Graduate Institute of International & Development Studies in Geneva.

Before his arrival in London, Nicholas was part of Switzerland’s Trade Diplomacy team at the WTO. Nicholas was Vice-Chairman of the Task Force for the organisation of the 2009 and 2011 WTO Ministerial Conferences. From 2007 to 2012, he was Chairman of the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA), leading and successfully concluding negotiations at ministerial level to improve internationally agreed disciplines for this key world economy sector in 2011. Nicholas holds 1st Class Honours Masters Degrees in Economic History & International Relations.