Thor Valdmanis is a managing director in FTI's Strategic Communications practice and is based in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Mr. Valdmanis provides corporate communications counsel on complex, event-driven issues facing global clients in financial services, natural resources and other industries.
Experience
Mr. Valdmanis, who joined FTI Consulting in New York in 2008, helps lead multi-national teams, counselling companies in financial services, mining and other diverse industries on M&A, crisis, litigation and restructurings, working in close partnership with companies’ legal and financial advisers.
Prior to joining FTI Consulting, Mr. Valdmanis served as Vice President of Communications for insurer Lloyd’s of London from 2005-2007, responsible for strategic communications, media and investor relations, brand promotion and speech writing for Canada and the U.S., the largest Lloyd’s market. Mr. Valdmanis developed Lloyd’s corporate policies on natural catastrophe and terrorism risk insurance as well as global climate change and led crisis management efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Mr. Valdmanis was an award-winning financial journalist for almost two decades, covering M&A and restructurings for The Evening Standard in London and later USA Today in New York. He was a frequent guest television commentator on CNBC and CNN. During the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa, Mr. Valdmanis reported on the tournament for the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper and as a TV commentator for Canadian sports broadcaster TSN. He made several trips to South Africa in subsequent years, reporting on the post-apartheid economy.
On 9/11, Mr. Valdmanis reported from the foot of the World Trade Centre, and then spent several months as a special USA Today foreign correspondent, travelling with Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance as they liberated Kabul in November, 2001. He has also reported from Kenya, Egypt, Somalia, Dubai, southern Lebanon, Tajikistan and Turkey.
Mr. Valdmanis is a native of Montreal, Canada and graduated from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario with a B.A in politics, philosophy and economics.