User:NeemNarduni2/Harvey Boulter

Harvey Boulter (born 7th November 1969) is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, and is Chairman and Chief Executive of Porton Group, a private equity company he founded in March 2000 specializing in the commercialization of government and military technology.

Boulter was an adviser to the Ministry of Defence on the breakup of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) into QinetiQ and DSTL.

Early career
Born in Angmering, West Sussex, England, Boulter was raised in Worthing and went to the University of Bristol in 1988 where he studied Economics and Accountancy. Boulter qualified as a chartered accountant (ICAEW) and as a member of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI) in 1994. In 2004 he was made a Fellow of ICAEW and in 2016 he was made a Fellow of CISI.

Boulter joined Union Bank of Switzerland in 1994 based in London where he headed the investment banking team focused on aerospace and defense, particularly in Europe and North America.

While at UBS, Boulter concluded a number of deals including the formation of Airbus between the between the French, German and Spanish Governments.

During this time, Boulter won an advisory mandate for the UK Ministry of Defence to consider the privatisation of certain of their research assets. On his recommendation this led to Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) being split into what became QinetiQ and DSTL (the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory), headquartered at Porton Down. It was here that Boulter first identified certain military technologies that were potentially of material value in the civilian sector.

Porton Group
In early 2000, Boulter left UBS to found Porton Group, to commercialize government and military technology. Under Boulter as Chairman & CEO, Porton Group formed partnerships with government laboratories to fund and develop technology for military purposes that have parallel commercial applications, such s P2i a nano coating business which today protects mobile phones but was originally designed to reply liquid chemical attack against a soldiers clothing. These laboratories included DSTL, one of the UK's research sites for chemical biological defence; Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and other UK Government public sector research establishments, the University of Cambridge, Imperial College, and Warwick University.

In 2012 Porton Cyber was established to develop electronic privacy technology. One of its early investments was in secure messaging and mobile voice protection technologies through Communication Security Group (CSG). CSG’s Seecrypt and Cellcrypt products use military-grade encryption for instant messaging and voice/conference calls, and are in use within UK, US, Canadian and Australian Governments,  Verizon and Inmarsat. Porton Cyber also has investments in data centres, secure storage, encryption technologies, data analytics and cyber diagnostics.

In 2013, Boulter was the subject of complaints to the Cayman Islands regulator by investors in Cellcrypt over a licensing agreement that handed Seecrypt, which was chaired by Boulter, the rights to commercialise the company’s technology. A subsequent investigation in 2015 by the South China Morning Post into Porton Capital, a venture capital investment advisory firm run by Boulter, alleged large losses for some Hong Kong and overseas clients, and a mismatch between prices investors paid for shares in startup technology companies promoted by Boulter, and the issue prices recorded in the companies' annual accounts.

Legal dispute with 3M
In 2011, Porton Group was in legal dispute with 3M. The dispute centered around the MRSA detection technology BacLite, owned by Acolyte, which was in turn comprised the British Ministry of Defence-wholly-owned subsidiary, Ploughshare, and Porton Group.

In June 2011 Werritty organised a business meeting at the Shangri-La Hotel in Dubai. The meeting was attended by Adam Werritty, UK Secretary of State for Defence Dr. Liam Fox, Boulter in his role as CEO of Porton Group, and two other Dubai-based businessmen. Werritty had earlier been contacted by a lobbying firm known as Tetra Strategy, whom Boulter had hired at a rate of £10,000 per month, in an attempt to have Fox intervene in a Porton Group legal dispute that indirectly involved the MoD. Tetra are believed to have begun working towards arranging a meeting with Werritty or Fox as early as 25 March 2011. In an email from Lee Petar, Tetra's boss, to Boulter, Werrity is described as the "special adviser to the secretary of state for defence Liam Fox."

Werritty's initial meeting with Boulter in April 2011 led to discussions with Fox regarding the sale of a product called Cellcrypt. The 45 minute Dubai meeting in June 2011 was primarily about the possible sale of the voice encryption software to the British MoD. Boulter has claimed that the matter of a legal battle between Porton Group and 3M concerning Acolyte, a EU regulatory approved rapid detection technology for MRSA, and a deal worth £41,000,000, was allocated no more than 5–10 minutes at the end of the meeting. According to The Guardian, details relating to the nature of the visit and the business matters discussed suggest that it was "highly irregular". The MoD has stated that there were no officials present at the meeting but that one of those present claimed to have received the impression that all of those in attendance had been security cleared. Werritty did not have such clearance.

In late 2011 the High Court in London found in favor of Porton Group, with 3M being forced to pay damages for breach of its contractual obligations over their failure to accurately test, actively market and successfully seek regulatory approval in the US.