The Board has selected Mr Michael Ohanessian as the Chief Executive Officer to lead the next phase in the Company's growth. Mr Ohanessian's executive experience in technology-related businesses brings a mixture of operational, strategic and leadership capabilities to this role. Following a ten-year career at Mobil Oil, Mr Ohanessian joined the Boston Consulting Group where he consulted to clients in industries such as banking, airlines, mining, packaging, sports, oil and gas, retailing and biotechnology. As the CEO of Vision BioSystems, a division of the publicly listed Vision Systems, he transformed the business over seven years from a small unprofitable contract manufacturer into a vertically integrated, profitable and growing medical diagnostics business with distribution to over 60 countries. More recently, he has served as Chief Executive of Genetic Technologies Limited and has been involved in investment mangement and corporate advice with Lion Capital. As CEO, Mr Ohanessian will work particularly closely with our UK team to expand our presence in the burgeoning market for financial services in the United Kingdom.
Chris Silcox has extensive experience in project management, product development and implementation of procedures. For some years she carried out projects in a self employed capacity working within a range of organisations and industry types, focusing on accounting and administration services.
Chris brought her expertise into the financial services industry almost 10 years ago, and her position immediately prior to joining Præmium in 2002 was with Merrill Lynch Private as Administration Manager, in charge of their retail portfolio management products including superannuation.
At Præmium, Chris is responsible for overseeing and progressing the operations functions and development of the service in line with market and clients’ requirements and in accordance with available resources. She is also an Executive Director for Præmium Limited and Præmium Australia Pty Ltd’s Compliance Manager.
Paul Gutteridge brings significant experience from finance roles across Australia, UK and Canada over the past 15 years. Commencing at Ernst & Young in audit and business services and after commercial accounting roles with Schroders (UK), Paul has held senior finance roles at Damovo (Australia) and Telstra Business Systems.
Paul’s last position prior to joining Præmium was Chief Financial Officer of Netspace, a Melbourne based Internet service provider. After overseeing a three year period of rapid growth, he led the sale process of the company to iiNet Limited in April 2010.
Within Præmium, Paul’s responsibilities include overseeing the financial strategies of the Group and managing the areas of accounting, tax and treasury. Paul is a Chartered Accountant and holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne.
Graduating with a First Class Honours degree in Philosophy from Monash University, James entered the financial services industry in the early 90s working in Superannuation Administration with VicSuper then Portfolio Administration with Austrust. Further roles in Portfolio Administration followed with Bell Potter before he joined the Advent software in various consulting, product sales and distribution roles.
He joined Præmium in 2003 initially as a distributor before joining full time in 2005.
As Strategic Sales Manager James focus is on large network and institutional accounts with broking firms and fund managers, and those accounts requiring implementation strategies.