Published: January 20, 2026 at 9:37 am
Listed firm Big Technologies has agreed a £38.5 million settlement with former investors, leading to a 20% jump in its share price.
Big Technologies plc – trading as Buddi – is currently suing its founder Sara Murray OBE for hundreds of millions of pounds after accusing her of forgery and deliberate falsification of documents to push through the company’s £577m IPO in 2021.
Murray was dismissed as CEO of Big Technologies in March over the accusations, and her assets have been frozen amid the subsequent and ongoing £320m High Court battle. Murray – who founded and sold comparison website Confused.com earlier in her entrepreneurial career – launched people monitoring specialist Big Technologies in 2005. It provides the Buddi electronic tagging system to the prison service, among other products.
She led a management buyout for £12.3m in 2018 and the five former shareholders in the firm brought legal action against it, claiming they had been forced to sell their holding during the MBO and were therefore denied the opportunity of cashing in from the float.
Big Technologies initially denied the accusation but, following its accusations against Murray, has now accepted it. It said late last year that the potential forgery could “materially adversely impact the position of the company in the… litigation [brought against it by the former shareholders]… [we] are unlikely to be able to successfully defend material elements of the claim”.
It has agreed to pay £31.5m immediately and a further £7m in 18 monthly instalments. Its share price jumped around 20% on the news, with its market cap topping £300m.