Shiv Shankar Nair is currently the Chairman Emeritus of Suez Holdings and Vanuatu's Envoy Extraordinary to The Commonwealth in London.
His background is in Financial Engineering and Government Advisory roles. He is also recognized as a leading practitioner of Conflict Resolution among Sovereign states
Mr.Nair has spent the past twenty years in putting together some of the most iconic infrastructure projects in Africa and Latin America, using Chinese Exim credits, so much so, that the Economist magazine once dubbed him "China's secret weapon in Africa"
As an entrepreneur, he has set up, added value and sold several companies, especially in the "Economies in Transition". He bought, developed and sold off British Borneo Petroleum, an old midcap oil company. In 1995. Along with two local partners he set up the first post-soviet insurance company in The Republic of Georgia, and in 2004, when it had become the largest independent insurer in Georgia, sold it to the Bank of Georgia.
He has acted as an advisor on FDI, National Strategic Planning and Financial Engineering to the Governments of Nigeria, Ghana, Soviet Central Asian Republics, Vanuatu & Malta,
As a specialist in National Conflict Resolution and Consensus Building, Mr.Nair was called upon to attend the Somali Round Table, representing a major Middle Eastern Country. He also acted as mediator between the Govt. of Niger and major Chinese Oil Company in the dispute on the Agadem block , and represented another Chinese oil major in their negotiations with the Kurdish Government.
In 2013, Shiv Shanker Nair was appointed as Special Envoy of the Government of Vanuatu to initiate talks between Vanuatu and the Republic of Georgia on the issue of the de-recognition of the breakaway republic of Abkhazia. In 2018, The newly elected Government of Vanuatu appointed him their Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to The Commonwealth in London and Permanent Representative to UNWTO in Madrid