Mohamed Amersi

Amersi was born in Kenya to "a family from an Iranian-Indian background". In 1976 he came to the UK, and studied at Merchant Taylors School. Amersi studied medicine and law at Sheffield and Cambridge universities, and went on to earn an Executive MBA at the Saïd Business School, Oxford in 2016.

Amersi is an honorary fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford and a former governor of the Royal Agricultural University, Cirencester. Amersi since then has financed one of the most significant expansions at Brasenose, with the creation of the Amersi Foundation lecture theatre.

Telecoms

From 1997 to 2002, Amersi was a senior advisor at Telefónica with whom he co-founded Gramercy Communications Partners in New York, and was its Managing Director.

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. He was also the board member of various Rothschild Banking Group entities, Motorola, MegaFon and Mi-Fone.

Amersi, as head of the American investment bank Gramercy Communications Partners, and Juan Villalonga co-founded Emergent Telecom Ventures in 2002, an Emerging Markets advisory and consulting firm, specialising in Telecoms, Media and Technology.

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.

The Amersi Foundation

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.

A key project that the Amersi Foundation is involved with is the ‘Extremely Together’ project, coordinated by the Kofi Annan Foundation. 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. 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’.

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. Amersi is listed as being a member of its advisory board.

Amersi is a Conservative Party donor. He donated £10,000 each to Boris Johnson and Michael Gove during the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election. During the 2019 United Kingdom general election, he made donations of £99,500 and £7,400 to the central party, £5,000 to the Central Devon Association and £2,500 to the Rochdale Association.

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”.

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". 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. 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.

Legal

Amersi initially practised law as a barrister at 1 Brick Court. He was then a solicitor with Clifford Chance and Jones, Day Reavis & Pogue. Through his legal career, Amersi developed a specialisation in equity related deals, and represented issuers and financial institutions in over 100 transactions.