Mike O’Shea has been the chief executive of an asset management business since before the Berlin Wall came down, before anyone had used email to communicate the banalities of business life, and when people had to listen to that year’s best-selling single, Mistletoe and Wine by Cliff Richard, on a tape.
But when we meet O’Shea, still ensconced as chief executive of the firm he has run since 1988, Premier, via its successor firm the Aim-listed Premier Miton, more than 30 years later, he still brims with ideas and strategies.
O’Shea read economics at Cardiff University and after a brief diversion joined Premier in 1986, then a Guildford-based advice firm with what would nowadays be called a model portfolio service attached.
In 1988 he and colleagues split off the investment management unit from the advice business, running the assets of their former employer and other advice firms, and growing the company via a series of small acquisitions and product launches, eventually embracing the launch of its own fund management company in 2006.
He started as joint managing director of the spun off business, then became chief executive.
