Emerdata Limited is a

political consulting Political consulting is a form of consulting that consists primarily of advising and assisting political campaigns. Although the most important role of political consultants is arguably the development and production of mass media (largely tel ...

company based in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, formed in 2017 after filing for

insolvency In accounting, insolvency is the state of being unable to pay the debts, by a person or company (debtor), at maturity; those in a state of insolvency are said to be ''insolvent''. There are two forms: cash-flow insolvency and balance-sheet in ...

Cambridge Analytica Cambridge Analytica Ltd (CA), previously known as SCL USA, was a British political consulting firm that came to prominence through the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. It was started in 2013, as a subsidiary of the private intelli ...

. Former employees of Cambridge Analytica and SCL moved to successor firms, these companies dissolved with

acquisition Acquisition may refer to: * Takeover, the purchase of one company by another * Mergers and acquisitions, transactions in which the ownership of companies or their operating units are transferred or consolidated with other entities * Procurement, ...

by holding company Emerdata Limited. The company now appears to be largely owned by

Rebekah Mercer Rebekah Mercer is an American heiress and Republican political donor who is the director of the Mercer Family Foundation. She began overseeing day-to-day operations of political projects for the Mercer family when the Mercers became involved ...

and Jennifer Mercer, according to Cambridge Analytica's bankruptcy filing in New York. Cambridge Analytica was before partially owned by their family, including their father

Robert Mercer Robert Leroy Mercer (born July 11, 1946) is an American hedge fund manager, computer scientist, and political donor. Mercer was an early artificial intelligence researcher and developer and is the former co-CEO of the hedge fund company Renaissa ...

, a

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus ( ...

who made contributions to brown clustering. In July 2018 the Emerdata director was Jacquelyn James-Varga. The Federal Trade Commission of the United States has imposed to sue Cambridge Analytica after misusing data scraped from 87 million unwitting social media users. Emerdata Limited soon acquired the company after the news on

misappropriation In law, misappropriation is the unauthorized use of another's name, likeness, identity, property, discoveries, inventions, etc without that person's permission, resulting in harm to that person. Another use of the word refers to intentional ...

of digital assets was publicized.

Activities

The internal administrators (during the David Carroll case) of Emerdata Limited have been accused of misleading an adjudicator according to the High Court of England and Wales. Adjudicator Robert Hildyard, who had earlier granted Cambridge Analytica a legal motion to be put into administration, "wasn't told" that administrators of High Court (Vincent Green and Mark Newman of liquidator

Crowe LLP Crowe may refer to: * Crowe (surname), origin of the name and a list of people * Crowe baronets, a former baronetcy of England * Crowe Global, an accounting, consulting, and technology firm from the USA * Crowe Lake, Peterborough County, Ontario, C ...

) were, allegedly, not "independent" of Cambridge Analytica. The High Court of Justice of England and Wales affirms Emerdata’s

subsidiaries A subsidiary, subsidiary company or daughter company is a company owned or controlled by another company, which is called the parent company or holding company. Two or more subsidiaries that either belong to the same parent company or having a s ...

or daughter companies are the SCL Group Ltd and SCL Analytics Ltd. The trading subsidiaries of SCL Analytics Ltd are SCL Commercial Limited which provided data analysis to commercial customers, SCL Social Limited which provided campaign management and communications services to political customers, and SCL Elections Limited. In April 2019, 21% of Emerdata's shares were held by three individuals,

Alexander Nix Alexander James Ashburner Nix (born 1 May 1975) is a British businessman, the former CEO of Cambridge Analytica and a former director of the SCL Group, Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) Group, a behavioural research and strategic comm ...

, Julian Wheatland and Nigel Oakes. Julian Wheatland is now its sole director.

References

{{reflist Political consulting firms 2017 establishments in England Companies based in London Consulting firms established in 2017 Consulting firms of the United Kingdom

Activities

See also

References