Nishan Fernando - Managing Director

Nishan Fernando

Managing Director – BDO Consulting (Pvt) Ltd

Transaction Advisory Service | Strategic and Business Advisory

Executive Summary

Nishan Fernando is the Managing Director of BDO Consulting (Pvt) Ltd., which carries the Advisory Practice of BDO Sri Lanka. Nishan joined BDO in 2012, prior to which he had 20 years of experience in audit, advisory and in industry corporate finance.

He has held several international positions: member of the International Accounting Education Standards Board of the IFAC (2009 – 2013); member of Consultative Advisory Group of IAESB (2014 – 2019); member Asia Oceanian Standards Setters Group (since 2011); and Chair of the Centre for Excellence of Standards and Quality of South Asian Federation of Sri Lanka. In 2020 he was elected as the Vice Chair of Asia Oceanian Standards Setters Group and is the Chair Elect for 2021-22.

Nishan has been involved in standards setting and governance aspects in Sri Lanka. He is a Past President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka. He functioned as a Commission Member of the Securities & Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka; and as a member of the Sri Lanka Accounting and Auditing Standards Monitoring Board. He has been a member of the Sri Lanka Accounting Standards Committee which he chaired from 2009 – 2013 during which period he drove the project to converge Sri Lanka with International Financial Reporting Standards. He has been the Chairman of the Sri Lanka Financial Reporting, Implementation and Interpretation Committee since 2013. He has been a member of the Corporate Governance Committee which developed the Corporate Governance Codes in Sri Lanka.

He is a IFRS trainer certified by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (ICAEW) having attended its train the trainer programs on IFRS and on IFRS for SMEs. He has conducted many capacity building programs on IFRS in Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan and Cambodia. He has made country presentations at Standards Setters Conferences of SAFA, AOSSG IASB and IFASS.

Nishan is the Independent Chairman of First Capital Holdings PLC.

 

Areas of Expertise

  • IFRS Implementation & Reporting
  • M&A, Valuations & Due Diligence
  • Capital Raising and restructuring
  • Corporate Governance
  • Investigative assignments

 

Qualifications and Certifications

  • FCA
  • ACMA (UK)
  • MBA (SJP)

 

Professional Affiliations

  • Fellow Member – Institute of  Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka