Rt Hon Lord Mark Malloch‐Brown KCMG

Mark Malloch-Brown is a former number two in the United Nations as well as having served in the British Cabinet and Foreign Office. He now sits in the House of Lords and is active both in business and in the non‐profit world. He also remains deeply involved in international affairs.

He is currently Chairman of SGO and its elections division Smartmatic, a leading elections technology company. He is on the Boards of Investec and Seplat, which are listed on the London as well as Johannesburg and Lagos stock markets respectively. He is also on the board of Kerogen, an oil and gas private equity fund. He is a senior adviser to FTI Consulting where he previously led its EMEA practice.

He served as Deputy Secretary‐General and Chief of Staff of the UN under Kofi Annan. For six years before that he was Administrator of the UNDP, leading the UN’s development efforts around the world. He was later Minister of State in the Foreign Office, covering Africa and Asia, and was a member of Gordon Brown’s cabinet. Other positions have included vice‐chairman of George Soros’s Investment Funds, as well as his Open Society Institute, a Vice‐President at the World Bank and the lead international partner in a political consulting firm. He also has served as Vice‐Chairman of the World Economic Forum. He began his career as a journalist at The Economist.

He chairs or is on the Board of a number of non‐profit boards including the International Crisis Group, the Open Society Foundation, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation and the Centre for Global Development. He is a former Chair of the Royal Africa Society.

Mark is also a Distinguished Practitioner of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University and was formerly a visiting distinguished fellow at the Yale Centre for the Study of Globalisation. He has a number of honorary degrees. He was knighted in 2007 for his contribution to international affairs.

He is the author of “The Unfinished Global Revolution” and in 2005 Time Magazine put him on its list of the 100 most influential people in the world. He continues to write, broadcast and lecture about international issues.

Fidelis Oditah QC

A Queen’s Counsel since 2003, Fidelis practices at the English and Nigerian Bars in a broad range of areas. In England, he specialises in chancery and commercial work, with emphasis on company, insolvency and restructuring work. He has acted and/or advised on virtually all major corporate insolvencies in the UK in the last two decades. He is a Master of the Bench of the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn. Prior to going to practice in the City of London, Fidelis was a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford and taught contracts, trusts, company law, corporate finance and corporate insolvency to undergraduates and graduate students.

In Nigeria, his practice encompasses energy, projects, corporate and general commercial law. He has advised and acted for the Federal Government of Nigeria in a number of the most significant energy and power matters, and for many large and medium sized companies. Fidelis has extensive commercial arbitration practice as counsel and also sits frequently as an arbitrator in a broad range of commercial disputes.

Outside the practice of law, Fidelis remains a visiting professor at the Oxford University Faculty of Law (2000-). He also served as a consultant to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) from 1995 to 1999. In addition, Fidelis has authored three texts: Legal Aspects of Receivables Financing (1991); The Future for the Global Securities Market: Legal and Regulatory Aspects (1996) and; Insolvency of Banks: Managing the Risks (1996).