Board and Management
Professor Christofer Toumazou FRS, Executive Chairman
Professor Chris Toumazou FRS, an executive director of Toumaz Holdings, will assume the role of chief executive officer (part-time). Professor Toumazou is co-founder of the Group’s two investment companies: Toumaz Technology and Future Waves and has been instrumental to the design and development of the technologies owned by the two companies. He currently is chairman and chief technology officer of Toumaz Technology and chairman of Future Waves, in addition to being founding director and chief scientist at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College, London. Professor Toumazou is an advisor to many healthcare panels, including the Singapore Government in the field of medical devices. He is a senior Advisor to the Board of Grace Semiconductor in Taiwan, one of the largest semiconductor foundries in the world, and a member of the UK foresight committee on a report for infectious diseases as well as a member of the UK MOD Defence Strategic Advisory Committee on critical technologies. Professor Toumazou is a Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and Fellow of the American Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. He also received the 2007 Silver Medal of the UK Royal Academy of Engineering for pioneering contributions to British Industry.
Anthony Sethill, Executive Director, Chief Executive Officer
Before joining Toumaz, Anthony was a founder of Frontier Silicon Ltd, the leading supplier of digital broadcast and network audio products, in 2001. He successfully grew the business, establishing Frontier Silicon as a strategic supplier of digital audio chips and modules to global consumer electronic brands.
Prior to that, Anthony was Managing Director of Consumer & Mobile Phone Products at Amstrad PLC, Sales and Marketing Director at Samsung (UK) Ltd, and has also held positions with ONDigital and Alba Group Plc.
Jonathan Apps, Executive Director, Chief Financial Officer
Jonathan has over 16 years’ experience as a finance director, having previously been CFO of Europe’s largest independent WiFi operator The Cloud Networks for over four years. Prior to that Jonathan was CFO of interactive TV, mobile and internet content producer YooMedia, CFO at AIM listed technology venture capital fund E-capital Investments, and European Finance Director at network integrator EQUANT Integration Services.
Jonathan qualified as a chartered accountant with Coopers & Lybrand and has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Birmingham University.
Dr. Martin Knight, Non-Executive Director
Dr. Knight has been chief operating and finance officer of Imperial College London since October 2004 and is additionally chairman of Imperial Innovations Group plc, the College's AIM-listed technology transfer company. Dr Knight was previously a director with Morgan Grenfell & Co Ltd.. He advised and acted for a number of major public and private companies on project and corporate finance transactions and on financial strategies. Dr Knight leads overall financial strategy as a member of the Imperial College's Management Board and Council. Dr. Knight, previously chairman of the Council's Finance and Investments Committees, has been a distinguished member of the College’s governing body since 1994.
Sir Hossein Yassaie Ph.D., Non-Executive Director
Sir Hossein Yassaie, PhD, is the chief executive officer of Imagination Technologies, a leading provider of System-on-Chip (SoC) silicon IP whose technologies power many of the advanced and new generation mobile phones, personal media players, ultra low-power PCs/mobile internet devices (MIDs), digital radios, TV’s and automotive navigation and information devices. Imagination Technologies is also the parent of PURE Digital, the leading global digital radio supplier. After attaining his PhD, Dr. Yassaie was a research fellow at the University of Birmingham with extensive work on digital signal processing and high performance system architectures. Prior to joining Imagination Technologies in February 1992, he was with STMicroelectronics and Inmos for eight years (since 1984), where he set up and managed the DSP and digital video developments. At Imagination Dr. Yassaie initially held the position of technical director, before becoming chief executive officer in June 1998. He has been responsible for the company’s successful strategy which has seen it develop and market advanced, low-power and market-driving technologies in the key areas of 3D graphics, digital video and display, programmable communications and embedded processing. He was also responsible for launching, in 2001, PURE Digital, the world’s leading manufacturer of DAB and internet digital radios and the entity behind the market leading PURE brand, as a wholly owned division of Imagination. Recently knighted in the New Year's Honours list for his work in technology and innovation.
Chris Batterham, Non-Executive Director
Chris Batterham has considerable financial and operational experience and expertise having had an extensive career in a range of relevant companies. His career includes being finance director of Unipalm plc, the first internet company to IPO and then staying with the company for five years following its takeover by UUnet and being CFO for Searchspace. He is currently a non-executive director of SDL plc, Iomart Plc and office2office plc. He is also Chairman of Eckoh plc. Chris has served on the boards of Staffware plc, DBS Management plc, DRS plc, Betfair Limited and The Invesco Techmark Enterprise Trust plc.