Meet Daniel McKorley, the Ghanaian business magnate who wants to buy Nottingham Forest

Ghanaian entrepreneur Daniel McKorley has expressed interest in buying English Premier League side Nottingham Forest. According to the businessman, he has been a supporter of the club for a long time now.

The 52-year-old investor is also a known supporter of Ghana Premier League side Accra Great Olympics.

“The only team I support in the world apart from Oly [Acrca Great Olympics] is Nottingham Forest,” he stated, according to Ghana’s Joy FM. “I have been a supporter of Nottingham Forest when Nottingham was even in the third division. Why? Because I want to buy that team. I want to buy Nottingham Forest imagine with all this development going on.”

According to him, should the takeover be successful, he will make sure that more Ghanaians get the opportunity to play for the club. “McDan buys Nottingham Forest and every time you see about 60% of the players [in the team] from the English league are from Ghana,” he said.

Born on June 17, 1971, in the Ghanaian capital Accra, McKorley fought his way out of poverty to build the McDan Group of Companies, a transportation and logistics company with operations in freight and contract logistics. His businesses include McDan Shipping, McDan Aviation, and McDan Logistics. It is reported that his companies are widely recognized in Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, and his own home country, Ghana.

His McDan Shipping Company, headquartered in Accra, also has branches in Tema and Takoradi. What is more, it has a presence in over 2000 major air and sea ports worldwide due to its partnership with Cross Trades and World Cargo Alliance (WCA). The company is also the first and only Freight Forwarding Company to obtain an Air Carrier License in handling chartered cargo flights in Ghana and currently is the GSA for multiple airlines, according to the company’s website.

McKorley attended Ghana’s prestigious university, the University of Ghana after high school but withdrew due to financial challenges. However, he graduated from college 15 years later. He graduated from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Also, he has an honorary doctorate from the London Business School and a BSc and an EMBA in Business Administration and Entrepreneurship from the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA). 

The businessman is touted in the Ghanaian media as one of the richest entrepreneurs in the West African country. However, not much is known about his estimated net worth although some Ghanaian news websites claim he is worth between $600 million to $1 billion.

Not too long ago, the commercial private jet services of MccKorley announced the addition of two new airplanes to its fleet. This move signifies the business’s commitment to expand and stamp its position as one of Africa’s first private jet service providers. McKorley has seen the growing demand for luxury air travel and has set out to meet it head-on.

The two planes in his possession are; the Beechcraft King Air b200 – a seven-seater aircraft that will make its operations mainly in Ghana, the West Africa sub-region, and occasionally to other parts of Africa. The second plane, the Airbus EC135 T1 helicopter, is set to travel anywhere in Ghana and West Africa to give clients scenic tour views from a helicopter, and also function as a secondary medical transfer to connect topographically-separated hospitals, helping patients to reach facilities for appropriate medical attention.