Ian Johnson (pictured) has retired from the board and as CEO of Big Technologies plc amid the firm’s boardroom battle with its founder Sara Murray OBE.
The company – trading as Buddi – confirmed this morning that Johnson, who only joined the company 16 months ago, has departed as planned following a handover period with acting CEO Charles Lewinton.
Big said it is undertaking a formal process to find a permanent CEO and that it had created and issued new shares to Lewinton.
The company is currently suing Murray 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 in March 2025 over the accusations, and her assets have been frozen amid the subsequent and ongoing £320m High Court battle.
She continues to hold 25% of the voting rights in the firm and last month was successful in removing Camilla Macun as a non-executive director at its AGM. She and her supporters however failed to remove three other directors.
Astonishingly Big Technologies published two sets of AGM voting results – the official results, with Murray’s votes included, and an unofficial set where they were not taken into account. Macun would have been returned to the board with a 72% majority, they claimed, had Murray’s votes not been taken into account.
CityAM reported Murray’s response: “I do not understand the pointless and irrelevant presentation of results excluding my votes as I am the founder and own 25% of the company and the board needs to start dealing with this reality.
“It is time to return this business to being the brilliant company I founded and built.”
The London-listed firm reported a drop in annual revenue and EBITDA in January after agreeing a £38.5 million settlement with disgruntled former investors.
The backdrop
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, recently 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 agreed to pay £31.5m immediately and a further £7m in 18 monthly instalments.
Murray has claimed that the five shareholders have been bankrolled behind the scenes by her ex-husband Michael Jackson, former chairman of software giant Sage, whom she split from in 2009. Both the former investors and Jackson denied this accusation.
The voting rights in Big Technologies of several companies with ties to Murray were suspended in June 2025 after Big served legal notices which accused her of failing to disclose interests in the entities, which collectively held 17.3% of its shares, and also of providing false information during the company’s 2021 IPO. The accusation is that she used offshore shell companies to push out minority shareholders.
Murray – who was once appointed to the technology strategy board of Gordon Brown’s Labour government – told CityAM she has legacy family connections to the offshore trusts but denied being directly involved in them. Together they controlled around two-fifths of the company’s share capital prior to the AIM flotation.
The Rickmansworth-based firm alleges that Murray also improperly diverted significant funds from the group prior to 2019.
Twists
In a twist in late 2024, Murray succeeded in ousting Big Technologies chairman Alexander Brennan in a shareholder revolt and managed to get James Graham Matheson added to its board.
Sangita Shah took over the role on an interim basis and remains in post today.
Johnson joined the board in April 2025 and was made CEO in the following month. However last month he decided to step aside.
Lewinton joined the business pre-IPO, 14 years ago, and has served as COO, CTO and VP Americas during his time with the group.
He has recently overseen significant growth in the Americas, with US ARR growth at 40% in 2025, supplemented by this year’s large contract win in Chile. He has also overseen the release and certification of the group’s latest AlcoTag and AlcoBreath products.