Kavan Bhandary

Kavan Bhandary is global director and heads the business intelligence unit of Wavteq, a global strategy consulting firm advising governments and public sector institutions in building resilient economies by offering creative solutions around new job creation and accelerating capital investment. Kavan has close to two decades of experience working with some of the world’s leading regional and national investment promotion agencies, securing greenfield, strategic investment projects and providing actionable insights on economic development growth strategies. He has a wealth of experience in corporate location strategy, global trade and market entry for companies of all sizes.

Alex Irwin-Hunt

Alex Irwin-Hunt is global markets editor at fDi Intelligence, covering the latest trends in cross-border investment, writing features about the themes that shape investment decisions across industries and producing reports on investment destinations worldwide. He has written about the international expansion of technology companies and produced fDi’s first Start-up Attraction Index and venture capital-powered FDI ranking. Additionally, he has contributed to FT special reports and regularly hosts panel sessions at global conferences on topics such as investment, technology, start-ups and real estate.

Preston Martin

Preston Martin, along with co-founder Thibault Serlet, founded Adrianople Group (AG) in 2018, as a business intelligence (BI) advisory firm with a focus on the special economic zones industry. From its inception, the vision of the company has been to bring actionable intelligence, operational capacity and growth capital to economic zones and city development projects. Over the years, AG has grown to become one of the world’s leading BI firms in the field of SEZs, forming a bridge between private equity and special jurisdictions.

Seth O’Farrell

Seth O’Farrell is global investment reporter for fDi Intelligence, covering FDI and geopolitics, and writing news and features on energy, the green transition, tech, China and east Asia. He previously worked at MandateWire, another FT Specialist publication, reporting on institutional investors in Italy, the UK and France. He speaks French, Mandarin and Italian and holds a degree in modern languages from the University of Oxford. 

Tony Restall

Tony Restall operates his consultancy company DSI Ltd, which provides expertise to many governments embarking on free zone programmes throughout the world. He has 40 years of experience in working with free zones and freeports globally. He was part of the team that launched the first Middle East free zone, Jebel Ali, and went on to set up some of the most successful free zones in the Middle East & Africa.

This article first appeared in the October/November 2022 print edition of fDi Intelligence.