London UK, 25/11/2014.- Antonio Mugica and Lord Mark Malloch-Brown today announce a new venture, SGO, built on the extraordinary success of Smartmatic, the world’s leading voting technology provider. Mugica, Smartmatic’s CEO and co-founder, will continue in this role in the enlarged group. Lord Malloch-Brown will become chairman. He will be joined on SGO’s board by Sir Nigel Knowles, Global CEO of DLA Piper, renowned entrepreneur David Giampaolo and Roger Piñate, Smartmatic’s COO.
“The launch of our new group, coupled with Mark, David and Nigel’s arrival on the board, reflects our widening vision and our ambition to harness the talents of our staff outside election technologies and consulting” said Antonio Mugica. “Led by this inspiring group of individuals, we will continue to make substantial investments in our core business and technology but over the coming months, as SGO, we will be rolling out a series of new ventures built on the fascinating work we are doing in other areas such as biometrics, online identity verification, internet voting and citizen participation, e-governance and pollution control, as well as enhancements to our core election products and services.”
Since it was founded in 2000, Smartmatic has grown into a global business, transforming elections around the world by guaranteeing total integrity in electoral solutions from registration, to vote count, through to results proclamation, backed by unrivalled technology and project management. The company has been involved in more elections (over 3,500) than any of its competitors; registered and counted over 2.3 billion votes in five continents, and developed its own innovative technology that sets a worldwide standard.
Commenting on his appointment, Malloch-Brown said, “When I discovered Antonio and his team I saw three extraordinary assets: an elections business that could help restore faith in democracy but which despite being the largest in the world remains too little known; a network of software engineers and scientists who were not closeted in the typical IT clusters near comfortable university campuses but were out there in the field, designing products that work in every corner of the world; and third, an exciting wave of solutions with the potential to change people’s lives.”
Malloch-Brown was head of the UN Development Programme for six years. During that time he established its Democracy and Good Governance practice and made it UNDP’s leading global specialisation. “Throughout his career Mark has insisted that solutions to development challenges start with successfully empowering people through voting and participation. I cannot imagine a more committed campaigner to lead our Board and, together with Nigel and David, to represent us going forward” said Mugica.