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AMR Panels Business Split Away
In Australia, communications services group STW is splitting its panels business The Online Research Unit (The ORU) from its MR agency AMR Interactive, and has appointed AMR Chairman and Founder Brian Fine to head the offshoot. AMR Interactive will now be run by MD Gary Wilkinson.
 STW Chairman Russell Tate says that the group identified the need to further develop The ORU as an independent company, in order to deliver growth and further focus on increasing market demand.
Fine established AMR in 1984, after previously working at Market Research Africa and as Research & Planning Director at J Walter Thompson in Canada. He holds a BA in Psychology earned in South Africa. His involvement with industry affiliations includes time spent as President of the Council of the Marketing Services Association and as National Chairman of the AMSRS (The Australian Market and Social Research Society); as ESOMAR representative for Australia; and Professor at UTS (University of Technology, Sydney). He is current Chair of the AMSRO (Association of Market and Social Research Organisations) Online Quality Taskforce, which will shortly be issuing Best Practice Standards for online research. Earlier this month, members of the AMSRO Committee unanimously appointed him AMSRO President.
The ORU owns and manages a suite of panels which was first developed offline by AMR in 1999, and was then expanded online after substantial private equity funding. The panels are used by research agencies and corporate clients, and now have 300,000 consumer members and 35,000 SMEs in Australia; and 30,000 panellists in Asia.
Web sites are at www.stwgroup.com.au and www.amrinteractive.com.
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