Johan Eliasch, born in Sweden in 1962, is the Chairman and CEO of Head N.V.,[1] the global sporting goods group, and is the former Special Representative of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
He is chairman of Equity Partners and London Films. He is a non-executive director of CV Starr Underwriting Agents and IMG, the international sports marketing group. He is an advisory board member of Investcorp, Brasilinvest,[2] Societe du Louvre, Centre for Social Justice and the British Olympic Association. He is a member of the Mayors of London's and Rome's International Business Advisory Councils. He is the first President of the Global Strategy Forum,[3] a trustee of the Kew Foundation and a patron of the Stockholm University.
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Johan Eliasch served in the British Government, as the Special Representative of Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Deforestation and Clean Energy from 2007 to 2010. He served in different roles for the Conservative Party between 1999 and 2007, as Party Deputy Treasurer (2003–07), Special Advisor to the Leaders of the opposition (William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith) and shadow Foreign Secretaries (Lord Michael Howard, Francis Maude and Michael Ancram) (1999–2006). He covered Shadow Foreign Relations (2003–2006) as part of the Shadow Foreign Office team. In 2006 he and Michael Ancram set up Global Strategy Forum, a foreign affairs think tank based in London; he remains President. He was a member of the Austrian President's delegation of State for Trade and Industry 1996-2006. He was Chairman of the Young Conservatives party in Djursholm, Sweden (1979–1982).
In 2005, Johan Eliasch created the Rainforest Trust and purchased for preservation purposes a 400,000-acre (1,600 km2) rainforest area in the heart of the Amazon rainforest near the Madeira River.[4] Johan Eliasch co-founded Cool Earth [5] in 2006, a charity he co-chairs, which sponsors local NGO's to conserve endangered rainforest and has over 120,000 registered members. In 2007 he was commissioned by HM Government to undertake an independent review on the role of international finance mechanisms to preserve the global forests in tacking climate change, 'The Eliasch Review' ,[6] which was launched by the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street in October 2008. The Eliasch Review has served as a guideline for REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) as part of the international climate change convention.