I have some personal experience of Greg Camm which is relevant...

I have some personal experience of Greg Camm which is relevant here.

I was an IT consultant at AMP Financial Services NZ, when Mr Camm became the CEO until he returned to Australia. He was very personable and approachable with real strengths in marketing, branding and relationship building. Professionally I never had anything to do with him but I chatted with him socially a few times and liked him personally.

Unfortunately in my opinion, he let the company's boring everyday technology rot during his tenure by constantly cutting the IT budgets and personnel. The IT department was under the finance department and didn't report directly to him. It was seen as a cost centre and not a source of strategic opportunity.

His focus was on getting the company's name up in lights on top of one Auckland's most expensive office towers and in moving staff from low cost Wellington to high cost Auckland to improve AMP's presence in Auckland and to have staff under one roof. Due to less opportunities in Wellington staff tend to stay twice as long as they do in Auckland and the costs of doing business there are significantly lower so this never made sense financially and was purely brand and marketing driven.

I also hate it when a board hires outsider advisers like Flagstaff to provide "strategic direction". That is what we shareholders pay the board to do, if they are not capable of doing it, they should step down. So good on Mr Ohanessian for trying to fight that battle as a waste of money. I probably would have swore too.

I would rather have passionate, quirky, technical people in charge of Praemium than smooth marketing focused financial services professionals. I would make a different choice for a different type of company.

As a long term shareholder who is up 147%, I will be voting to replace the board.