John Grant (British diplomat)

Sir John Grant KCMG
Principal Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
In office 1997–1999
Preceded by	Sir William Ehrman
Succeeded by	Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles
Personal details
Born	(1954-10-17) 17 October 1954
Alma mater	St Catharine's College, Cambridge

Sir John Douglas Kelso Grant KCMG (born 17 October 1954) is a retired British diplomat whose last diplomatic post was Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the European Union between 2003 and 2007. He now has a small number of part-time advisory roles.

Education

Grant was born in Singapore and educated at the Edinburgh Academy and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he read French and German.

Career

Grant's first postings were in Stockholm (1977–1980) and Moscow (1982–1984). After 18 months with Morgan Grenfell, a London-based merchant bank, he returned to the Foreign Office as a press officer. He was posted to Brussels in 1989 and spent most of the next eight years working there in three different roles.

He was Principal Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 1999 and served as British Ambassador to Sweden from 1999 to 2003.

Grant was then appointed UK Permanent Representative to the European Union. He chaired the Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER) during Britain's presidency of the EU in 2005.

After leaving the Foreign Office in 2007 Grant worked for BHP Billiton in London from 2007 to 2009, was executive vice-president, policy and corporate affairs, at BG Group from 2009 to 2015, and vice-president, international government relations, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation from 2015 to 2019.