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| Sunday, 12 September 2004 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Personality plus Workforce UAL's biggest asset by Surekha Galagoda
"Together with my highly talented and committed top team I find the challenge of restructuring UAL to maximize it's potential by increasing the value addition to our customers very exciting. We are fortunate to lead UAL with its strong Balance Sheet, high brand value, excellent IT systems and superior service standards," she added. UAL has a good reputation and a high standard of Corporate Governance as it is backed by two strong groups - John Keells and Carsons and at present John Keells is reaffirming its commitment by investing heavily in the financial services sector. Ms Tharmaratnam's father Prof H. V. J Fernando, was the Professor of Forensic Medicine, who was a Barrister of Law from Lincolns Inn as well. " He inspired me a lot and set an example to work hard and be committed. He was well read and knowledgeable, and in addition to his profession and managing family estates, he found time to be active members and end up as the Presidents of the Rotary Club of Colombo, Golf Club and Cancer Society as well as serving in many committees and societies including the Board of Review of the Inland Revenue" she said. She had her education at Bishops College. Although she came from a family with a medical background and her best subject at school being mathematics she trained at Ernst & Young and qualified by age 21 as a Chartered Accountant. "I was fortunate that I was awarded some prizes in my Accounting exams and earned recognition at the start of my career. I remember an invitation to the prize winners to have tea with the President and Council of the Institute of Chartered Accountants as a highlight of my training days. My training at Ernst & Young was an invaluable experience as I had the exposure to the practices and policies of the large corporates which gave me a good start." After qualifying she specialized in taxation at KPMG. She then worked in the Tax and Audit departments of a professional firm in the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. Her husband then did his MBA at IMD a Business School in Switzerland and they came back to Sri Lanka where he started a Consultancy firm. She worked for a short while as the Finance Director and Company Secretary of United Tractor the Caterpillar dealer in Sri Lanka, studied IT and joined her husband's consulting firm where she worked part time mainly on IT and Systems Consulting. She says "Looking back, I was fortunate to be able to work on flexi- hours until my daughter was eleven years. She is now a doctor, training in Surgery in UK and I am happy that I could spend quality time with her in her growing years, " Ms Tharmaratnam said. I moved from consulting to the Financial Services sector where I worked for the last eleven years. I was a Director, General Manager and Company Secretary at Eagle Insurance and Executive Vice President Operations at DFCC Bank heading a number of areas including IT, Marketing, HR, Operations, Actuarial, Compliance, Credit administration, Life operations and legal. She was also a Board Member of Sri Lanka Insurance and was a member of the Privatisation Steering Committee. She believes that women can counter the glass ceiling and reach the top although they have the greater challenge of balancing family and work demands. |
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News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
The 1600 highly trained, energetic and motivated sales force and our
employees that work in our 44 branches island wide are the biggest asset
of Union Assurance Limited (UAL). "We believe that it is people that
drive long term competitive advantage and are committed to developing our
human resource base" said CEO of UAL Marina Tharmaratnam.
