Ole Chr. Lindholm, the new Commercial Counsellor at the Royal Danish Embassy in Bangkok, wants to help put Thailand on the map again and create interest for Danish businesses .
“Thailand as a vacation destination is so well-known that it is easy to overlook that Thailand is in fact one of the main countries in Asia, where Denmark has for centuries had substantial commercial interests,” Ole Chr. Lindholm says.
“Right now, when many Danish companies are trying to balance their engagement with China, I find it very timely to be located here, because Thailand remains a very attractive base in the region with a relatively low exposure to geopolitical risk,” he explains.
Ole Chr. Lindholm would like the business community here in Thailand as well as back home to understand what kind of assistance the Danish Embassy is best at offering.
“We at the Danish Embassy are able to establish connections and create high level meetings with people in the public sector in Thailand that most Danish businessmen will have a hard time creating themselves,” he says.
“This simply comes with the nature of the role of the Danish Embassy and my job. Especially for larger companies of a certain scale, this is an invaluable service to open doors and create a network on behalf of the Danish businesses,” he adds.
“I am very sympathetic to the Danish tourist who likes Thailand and gets inspired to create an entrepreneurial business here but they seldom need that kind of help as a large Danish companies already established in Thailand.”
Ole Chr. Lindholm started working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1997 and was first given an overseas posting two years later as a First Secretary at the Danish Embassy in Brazil.
He returned to Copenhagen in 2001 and after two years and worked for Invest in Denmark department within the Foreign Ministry. He was in 2004 posted to the Danish Embassy in India where he served for three years until September 2007 as Commercial Counsellor.
Back in Denmark, he took leave from the Foreign Service to work as Managing Director for the family owned company Lindholm Maskiner A/S, which imports and markets machinery to professional maintenance of grass lawns, golf courses, etc.
He returned to the Foreign Ministry in 2010 and for the next three years, Ole Chr. Lindholm worked at the Trade Council of Denmark as team leader for the SME team in the Trade Council.
From there, Ole Chr. Lindholm was posted to China as Consul General for a period of three and half years at the Consulate General of Denmark in Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
Back in Denmark in 2017, Ole Chr. Lindholm first spent one year working for 7N Group, one of the largest IT consulting companies in Denmark, before he returned to his latest job in the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs for almost five years working with export and HR.
At this point during Ole Chr. Lindholm’s posting to the Danish Embassy in Bangkok, his wife Pia and his two sons have decided not to relocate to Bangkok with him but will remain back in Copenhagen to care of work and studies.
