American univeristy sharjah

Hamid D. Jafar

Chairman and CEO, Crescent Petroleum Company, Sharjah, UAE

Hamid Dhiya Jafar is Chairman of the Board of the Crescent Petroleum Group of Companies, headquartered in Sharjah, UAE.

It is the Middle East's oldest private sector upstream oil and gas resource company. He is also Chairman of the Board of Dana Gas PJSC, the Gulf region's only publicly-listed natural gas resource company with over 250,000 shareholders from across the GCC with a capital of AED 6 billion and assets over AED 18 billion.

Aside from his core business in oil and gas, Mr. Jafar has a variety of other regional and international commercial interests, including container shipping terminal operations, trucking, various other industrial undertakings, private equity and real estate. Mr. Jafar is Chairman of Gulftainer Ltd.; a founding shareholder and Member of the Board of Abraaj Capital, the Middle East's largest private equity firm; and a Director of the URUK Group. He was the founder of the UAE chapters of the Young Presidents Organization and the World Presidents Organization, and is also a member of the international Chief Executives Organization.

Mr. Jafar has promoted and supported important initiatives in higher education at Cambridge University and in the Gulf. He is also an active supporter of many charities, particularly those in aid of disabled and needy children, and cancer patients.

Mr. Jafar was born in Baghdad in 1947. He attended St. Paul's School in London, and subsequently studied at Churchill College, Cambridge University, where he obtained his bachelor's degree in engineering and did post-graduate studies in thermodynamics and fluid flow in 1967, followed by a master's degree.