Education
University of Oxford.
University of Oxford.
He is, since 21 October 2010, Permanent Secretary of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, replacing Simon Fraser. Donnelly joined the Treasury in 1980. In 1988 he was Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and from 1989 in Brussels working in the Cabinet of Leon Brittan before returning to London in 1993.
In 1995 he went on secondment to the French Finance Ministry, returning to the Treasury in 1996.
From 1998 to 2003 he worked in the Cabinet Office as Deputy Head of the European Secretariat, and then moved to the Immigration and Nationality Directorate of the Home Office for a year. In 2004, Donnelly was promoted to be Director-General for Economics (later, for Europe and Globalisation) in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
In 2008-2009 he went on secondment to United Kingdom telecoms regulator Ofcom, returning to the Cabinet Office to lead the Smarter Government whitepaper. In 2010 he was briefly made acting head of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office after Sir Peter Ricketts became the United Kingdom"s first National Security Advisor.
After a few months, he was appointed as permanent secretary at Bank for International Settlements, succeeding Sir Simon Fraser, who replaced at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. As of September 2015, Donnelly was paid a salary of between £180,000 and £184,999, making him one of the 328 most highly paid people in the British public sector at that time.
Donnelly studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University, international economics at the College of Europe in Bruges, and at the École nationale d"administration in Paris.
