Mr Chris May, Chairman – Management & Consular Liaison

Mr Chris May is an Australian entrepreneur with an extensive career in management and consular liaison, as well as comprehensive experience in all aspects of import and export logistics. This background enables him to facilitate successful event management, making him the ideal candidate for the Universal ITEC role.

In business, Mr May successfully founded and operated one of the leading life insurance agencies in Australia. In early 1970s he adapted one of the first word processors for marketing purposes. Utilising this technology, Mr May achieved the highest annual sales in Australia’s second largest insurance company, National Mutual.

During this time, he organised funding for several companies, including the real estate requirements of Volvo’s entry into Australia. Mr May undertook the groundwork to arrange for the funding of the company’s physical facilities in Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia, along with laying the foundation for funding of much of its dealer network.

This led to full understanding of the needs of the motor trade and its insurance needs, which enabled him to create a general insurance operation.

This business was totally focused on the motor trade, selling and administering motor vehicle, consumer credit and extended warranty insurance through the motor dealer network.

Three finance companies (subsidiaries of major banks) had the major share of the motor trade financing, and their subsidiaries, the insurance market. Mr May consolidated the very substantial number of smaller financiers to prevent the major financiers attacking the clients of these smaller companies through their insurance subsidiaries. They, in turn, introduced him to the dealers who became his agents.

Once aggregated, these smaller financiers were the size of the bigger companies. Within three years, there were more than 100 sales agents appointed and the company had offices in all states of Australia.

Trading as Cloverleaf, it introduced the concept of business managers to the Australian motor dealership network which today forms the backbone of their profitability.

This company had acted as the managing agent for a licensed insurer and in 1980 Mr May acquired that business from the UK parent. In a back-to-back transaction, he then sold the whole operation and entered semi-retirement.

In 1983 Mr May, in partnership with three prominent business associates, formed a private company which acquired the town of Dartmouth, Victoria, from the Commonwealth, Victorian, South Australian and NSW governments. The township had provided accommodation for 2200 people over seven years during the building of the Dartmouth Dam. Mr May accepted the appointment as managing director and CEO, overseeing the development and operation of the project until 1990.

On leaving Dartmouth in 1990, Mr May took on a consultancy to gain Air Lanka charter landing rights into Australia. Mr May’s entrepreneurial flair came to the fore as he packaged tour programs in both countries to realise the success of the venture.

Mr May took on the role of executive consultant and CEO of the Billich Gallery operation in 1992. Inspired by his earlier success in utilising technology for marketing purposes, he immediately contracted the creation of a computer system to track stock, transactions, clients and prospects efficiently, in addition to providing a powerful marketing tool.

With the internet still in its embryonic phase, a virtual private network was developed, servicing each outlet using dedicated individual phone lines and dial-up modems to transact in live time. The system, which processed tens of thousands of transactions, clients, prospects and individually identifiable stock items, consolidated the success of the gallery.

In 2013 Mr May accepted a three-year appointment as the inaugural Honorary Consul of Bosnia Herzegovina. On taking up this appointment, it quickly became apparent that fulfilling the key objectives of promoting two-way cultural ties and trade opportunities required a much more rigorous practical and logistical structure. Consultation with his counterparts revealed this lack of structure was a common issue and Mr May resolved to address the issues.

He proposed a solution to the need for a central venue in the Sydney CBD with the written support of 27 Honorary Consulates, approaching the NSW government on their behalf to facilitate the establishment of ITEC.

Since then, support for ITEC has been extended to include more than 40 Consulates, High Commissions and Embassies with others still to be briefed.

The Universal ITEC initiative will combine the direct upload of all trade and investment opportunities from all of the supporting countries with those of business subscribers to the Universal ITEC Platform, supplemented by public data scraped from hundreds of third party sites around the globe. All data will then be segmented into more than 40 industry sectors, so business can easily access all opportunities in one place at minimal cost.

In the final form, AI will deliver automatic trade matching of all opportunities.