Jacques Demers is Chairman & Managing Partner of AGAWA Partners Inc. and its asset management subsidiary, AGAWA Fund Management Inc. Jacques co-founded AGAWA in 2015, bringing over forty years of experience in investment, law and pensions, both in Canada and globally. AGAWA is derived from the Ojibwe word meaning “sheltered place”.
A lawyer since 1977, Jacques co-founded and led one of Canada’s most respected business law firms, Meighen Demers (now integrated within Norton Rose Fulbright), and pioneered a number of “first of-a-kind” corporate and project financings and infrastructure-related investments.
A private investor since 1987, Jacques served, between 2008-2015, as a member of OMERS Senior Executive Leadership and President & CEO of the OMERS Fund’s strategic investment division. Jacques is Chairman of Red Rock Insurance. He serves as a member of York University Board of Governors, Chair of its Investment Committee and Chair of the university’s Pension Fund Board of Trustees and its Comité permanent sur les affaires francophones, a member of the Japan-Canada Chamber Council, Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute Advisory Board.
Jacques continues to originate new sustainable investment opportunities, particularly in agri-food and the oceans, and to advise and work with institutional investors, governments, experts and regulators around the world and continues to invest. He is a respected speaker on investment, legal and pension related matters. Following studies in economics, history and philosophy at McGill University, Jacques studied law at Université Laval. He is fluent in English and French and has basic proficiency in Japanese.