Mohamed Amersi | |
---|---|
Born | Kenya | 20 April 1960
Nationality | British |
Occupation(s) | Founder and chairman, Inclusive Ventures CEO, Emergent Telecom Ventures |
Partner | Nadezhda "Nadia" Rodicheva |
Children | 1 |
Mohamed Amersi (born 20 April 1960) is a British businessman. He is the founder and chairman of the Inclusive Ventures Group, and former chairman of QML Group. He is a donor to the Conservative Party, having given nearly £525,000 since 2018.
He is founder and chairman of the Amersi Foundation, which has made contributions across a range of issues, including multi-faith and youth programmes to the arts and heritage, education, anti-slavery, climate change, technology and poverty reduction. He holds a number of chairmanship and advisory roles in the charity sector. [1] In October 2021, alongside the Pandora Papers leak, Amersi was identified as an advisor on a deal between Telia and Takilant, a company subsequently found to have been owned by Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the President of Uzbekistan, through offshore structures. Telia later settled the matter by entering into a DPA with the US Department of Justice. In the only trial that took place in Sweden to determine guilt, three Telia executives were acquitted at first instance and on appeal. [2] Representatives of Amersi said that he was not a suspect nor a witness in any of the multi enforcement agency investigations and acted in a limited advisory capacity to Telia on the deal. [3]
Amersi was born in Kenya to "a family from an Iranian-Indian background". [4] In 1976 he came to the UK, and studied at Merchant Taylors School. [5] Amersi studied medicine and law at Sheffield and Cambridge universities, [4] and went on to earn an Executive MBA at the Saïd Business School, Oxford in 2016. [6] [7]
Amersi is an honorary fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford and an independent governor of the Royal Agricultural University, Cirencester. [8] [9] Amersi since then has financed one of the most significant expansions at Brasenose, with the creation of the Amersi Foundation lecture theatre. [10]
Amersi initially practised law as a barrister at 1 Brick Court. [5] He was then a solicitor with Clifford Chance and Jones, Day Reavis & Pogue. [5] Through his legal career, Amersi developed a specialisation in equity related deals, and represented issuers and financial institutions in over 100 transactions. [5]
From 1997 to 2002, Amersi was a senior advisor at Telefónica [11] with whom he co-founded Gramercy Communications Partners in New York, and was its Managing Director. [5] [12] [13]
From 2008 to 2013 he was also a senior advisor to the TeliaSonera Group, leading their M&A work including the IPO of Kcell and MegaFon. [11] He was also the board member of various Rothschild Banking Group entities, Motorola, MegaFon and Mi-Fone. [11] [5]
Amersi, as head of the American investment bank Gramercy Communications Partners, [a] and Juan Villalonga co-founded Emergent Telecom Ventures in 2002, an Emerging Markets advisory and consulting firm, specialising in Telecoms, Media and Technology. [5] [11] [15] [16] [14]
While at Saïd Business School in 2014, Amersi founded Inclusive Ventures Group, a fund that focuses on making investments that have a positive social impact. [17] Through the fund, Amersi has supported RuralShores, a business that oversees outsourcing centres in rural areas of India. [17] Additionally, Inclusive Ventures has worked to improve access and the quality of education in Kenya through United We Reach and Bridge, an education and technology initiative. [18]
In 2018, Amersi became chairman of QML Group (now known as Neos International Limited), a Midlands-headquartered engineering supplier, with clients including Jaguar Land Rover, Rolls-Royce, GKN and McLaren. He resigned in 2020. [19] [20]
Amersi is a Conservative Party donor. He donated £10,000 each to Boris Johnson [4] and Michael Gove during the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election. [21] During the 2019 United Kingdom general election, he made donations of £99,500 and £7,400 to the central party, [22] [23] £5,000 to the Central Devon Association and £2,500 to the Rochdale Association. [24] [25]
On 4 October 2021, according to the massive leak of financial documents known as the Pandora papers, Amersi advised Swedish telecoms firm Telia on a £162m deal with Gulnara Karimova in 2010 which US authorities later described as a “bribe”. [26]
According to the Conservative MP David Davis, Amersi has used a number of legal measures against his critic, former MP Charlotte Leslie, who had compiled a due diligence note on his background, related to a dispute over the Conservative Middle East Council. Davis, speaking under parliamentary privilege, described Amersi's behaviour as "bullying". [27] Davis also said that Amersi had with legal threats effectively "silenced" a report on his activities by Margaret Hodge MP, chair of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on anti-corruption and responsible tax. [28] In June 2023, Amersi's defamation claim against Charlotte Leslie was struck out by the High Court, and the judge criticised the way Amersi had conducted the legal proceedings. [29]
The Amersi Foundation was founded in 2012 and is one of several philanthropic initiatives Amersi is involved with. The Foundation has worked on issues such as modern-day slavery. [30]
A key project that the Amersi Foundation is involved with is the ‘Extremely Together’ project, coordinated by the Kofi Annan Foundation. [31] The project brought together 10 of the world's leading young counter-extremism experts to provide guidance on how to prevent and counter youth radicalisation. [31] When asked about the work both foundations were conducting, Amersi said that ‘it is more important than ever that young people feel engaged and energised’. [31]
In 2017, the Amersi Foundation contributed to the funding of The Foundry at Oxford University, a centre for entrepreneurs opened by Tim Cook, CEO of Apple. [32] Amersi is listed as being a member of its advisory board. [33]
Amersi is also involved in several projects that were launched under the Prince of Wales, including the Prince's Trust International, the Prince's Trust Mosaic network and Dumfries House. [11] [34] [35] He is a Trustee and a member of the Global Advisory Board of Prince's Trust International, and a Trustee for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is also the chair of the International Advisory Council for the British Asian Trust, another of the Prince of Wales’ charitable initiatives. [36] Additionally, he chairs the Board of Trustees for the Islamic Reporting Initiative, is a trustee of the Kailash Satyarthi Children's Foundation, the Rose Castle Foundation, which works with faith leaders to improve inter-faith communications and United We Reach. [37] [38] [39] He is a Counsellor for One Young World. [40] [41] [42]
His partner is his Russian-born business partner, Nadezhda Rodicheva. She has herself donated more than £250,000 to the Conservative Party in 2017 and 2018. [4]