Education
University of Oxford. Stanford University; Christ Church.
University of Oxford. Stanford University; Christ Church.
Le Merle is Chairman of the United States advisory boards of Shanshan Group and Yurun Group, two of China"s largest companies and is a Board Director at private companies including Concept Art House, LesConcierges, Perkville, Soundwave and SuperTales. He was formerly Chairman of Telltale Games. Le Merle"s first job was as a paper delivery boy in South East London.
Early summer jobs included soldering printed circuit boards, selling men"s suits and mattresses at Harrods of London and working as a silver service waiter across the banqueting halls and five star hotels of London.
In 1980 he was made a management trainee at National Westminster Bank. On graduation from Oxford, he was a consultant with McKinsey & Company, Incorporated. in New York and London.
In 1986 McKinsey sponsored Le Merle to attend Stanford Graduate School of Business where he graduated with an Master of Business Administration. While at Stanford, Le Merle acquired his pilot"s license and worked with British Telecom Capital (leveraged buyouts) in New York, and Bankers Trust Venture Capital in London. From 1992 to 1999 Le Merle was a consultant at AT Kearney a global management consulting firm.
As consultant Le Merle advised several of the largest companies in the world on issues of strategy, operations, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, alliances and turnarounds.
Between 1999 and 2000 Le Merle was a senior executive at Gap, Incorporated. with responsibilities that included worldwide strategy, and corporate development for each of Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic. He was also SVP Gap Global Marketing. During this period he was an advisor to the State of California on the future development of the Biotechnology Industry in the state and in each of the four biotechnology clusters in the State: San Diego, Southern California, Sacramento and the Bay Area and to Shanghai Municipality as the city developed its new Life Sciences Zhangjiang Hi-Technical Park.
Between 2006 and 2008 Le Merle was Company-President of Keiretsu Forum San Francisco/New Brunswick (the world"s largest angel investor network) in which capacity he was invited in 2007 to speak to representatives of the provinces of China in the Great Hall of the People at Tiananmen Square on the topics of innovation and angel investing.
Le Merle is also a frequent speaker on interactive media and entertainment and has been a top ranked speaker at GDC in San Francisco and China.
He is an active angel investor and a member of The Band of Angels and Keiretsu Forum. While with McKinsey, he was a member of the Firm"s Consumer, Retail, Corporate Finance and Salesforce Effectiveness practices. Beginning as a founding member of the firm"s Financial Institutions Group in New York, he joined the San Francisco office in 1994 where he served as Western United States. Practice Leader until his departure from the firm in 1999.
He is also a member of The Band of Angels.