Noel Clehane is the Global Head of Regulatory & Public Policy at BDO and a chartered accountant with over 30 years’ experience of professional practice as an audit partner and high-level public policy involvement.
He is a Fellow of both Chartered Accountants Ireland and of ICAEW in the UK (where he has been a Council Member since 2014), and holds other qualifications from Law Society Ireland, Insead Paris, the Institute of Risk Management, Florida Atlantic University and Zurich University of Applied Sciences.
Noel has travelled extensively meeting regulators, policy makers, politicians, and corporate representatives all over the world. He coordinates and executes the involvement of the BDO network globally in regulatory, advocacy and public policy matters. He also advises the BDO Global leadership on geopolitical and geostrategic risks as well as emerging regulatory and public policy trends. He has extensive and regular senior-level contact with the major European institutions and is the primary BDO contact for a range of multilateral bodies including the WTO, OECD, World Bank, WEF, ASEAN Secretariat and UNCTAD.
Noel has a particular focus on the links between Europe and ASEAN and already represents BDO on the Supervisory Board of the EU-ASEAN Business Council (EU-ABC). In 2019, he established the Brussels Support Group of the EU-ABC and regularly briefs the Council’s Executive Board on EU matters. He has chaired the European Services Forum since 2017.
Noel has participated actively in many EU-ABC delegations in Brussels and across ASEAN and is a regular visitor to the region. He is also a regular contributor to inter-regional business dialogues on the economic potential of EU-ASEAN economic relations and of ASEAN generally. He has written numerous articles and blogposts on the ASEAN region, is very active on social media about EU-ASEAN matters and has chaired and participated in numerous panels, webinars, and conferences on EU-ASEAN topics in recent years.
He leads engagement for the EU-ASEAN Business Council with the EU-Singapore Business Roundtable, the ASEAN Business Committee, and the European Policy Centre in Brussels as well as with the Friends of ASEAN and the Delegation to South East Asia in the European Parliament. He is also a very active member of several other organisations including Asia Society Switzerland, Asia House, and the Asian Corporate Governance Association.
About BDO
BDO is one of the largest professional services organisations in the world, employing more than 90,000 partners and staff across 1,600 offices in 167 countries and with an aggregate global turnover more than US$10bn. Its Global Office is in Brussels, Belgium.
BDO firms offer a wide range of services related to the core service offerings of accounting and auditing, taxation, business advisory and business outsourcing. It has firms in all 10 ASEAN member states and all 27 EU member states as well as in the UK and all EFTA countries.
