Jeremy Benjamin Gerald Asher is an English businessman and company director
Education
Born in London in 1958, Asher attended Winchester College, and went on to earn a Bachelor of Science (Economy) degree at the London School of Economics, then an Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School, which he received with high distinction in 1981, also being designated a Baker Scholar.
Career
He has been the chairman of Agile Energy Limited since 2005, and, since 2011, has also chaired Tower Resources plc, an oil and gas exploration company listed on the London Alternative Investment Market. He is also a director of Better Place, a venture-backed private firm providing infrastructure and services for the mass deployment of electric vehicles, and of Pacific Drilling Société Anonyme, a company on the New York Stock Exchange that owns and operates ultra-deepwater drillships. He joined Washington District of Columbia-based Strategic Planning Associates (later Mercer Management Consulting, ultimately merged into Oliver Wyman in 2007) as a consultant while still at Harvard, in 1980, and rose to become a manager before leaving in 1984.
He then joined multinational commodity trader Marc Rich + Company AG (today Glencore), and by the time of his departure in 1989 had become global co-head of Global Oil Products there.
He remained on the supervisory board at Beta Raffineriegesellschaft Wilhelmshaven mbH, the firm established to run the plant, until 1997. In 1998, Asher became group chief executive for Pennsylvania Consulting Group, based in London.
During his time there, Pennsylvania globalised and grew from 2,500 to just under 4,000 staff He left this role in 2001, when he became chairman of SkyVision Holdings Limited.
In 2005, he founded Agile Energy Limited, an energy investment company, where he took up the post of chairman, which he retains today.
Since founding Agile, he has also sat on the boards of various other firms, including Process Systems Enterprise Limited (between 2003 and 2008), and Gulf Keystone Petroleum and Better Place Limited Liability Company (both between 2008 and 2010). He served again on the board of Gulf Keystone Petroleum in 2013-2014. In addition to his role at Agile, he joined the board of Tower Resources plc, an oil and gas exploration company listed on London"s Alternative Investment Market (American Institute of Management), in 2007, and became chairman in 2011.
Today, Asher is chairman at Agile and Tower, a director on the boards of Better Place and Pacific Drilling Société Anonyme, and an advisor to Oil Refineries Limited in Haifa, Israel.
Asher"s younger brother, Japhet, has been active as a film and television producer since the early 1980s.
Membership
He is also a member of London Business School"s global advisory council and the Engineering Advisory Board of Imperial Innovations plc, Imperial College London"s commercial arm, which is listed on the American Institute of Management.