The Team


Lars Davies, CEO and Founder

Lars is a phys­i­cist and a law­yer by train­ing. He foun­ded Kalypton as a res­ult of his legal, aca­demic, and tech­nical exper­i­ences in order to deliver solu­tions that enable users to achieve reg­u­lat­ory com­pli­ance and evid­en­tial weight for their elec­tronic com­mu­nic­a­tions. Prior to this he was a Senior Vis­it­ing Fel­low to the Insti­tute for Com­puter and Com­mu­nic­a­tions Law, Centre for Com­mer­cial Law Stud­ies at Queen Mary, Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don (CCLS).

Lars joined the Centre for CCLS in 1995 as a full-time aca­demic law­yer. Prior to becom­ing a law­yer, Lars worked in the com­puter industry.

Whilst at the CCLS, Lars spe­cial­ized in Inform­a­tion Tech­no­logy Law, Inter­net Law and Tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions Law, and con­cen­trated on issues that included elec­tronic fin­an­cial ser­vices, secur­ity, authen­tic­a­tion, and reg­u­lat­ory com­pli­ance. One of his first areas of research was into digital and elec­tronic cash (he co-authored the paper ‘Digital Cash’ with Pro­fessor Chris Reed). His research delved into the lim­it­a­tions and risks posed by stand­ard elec­tronic and digital cash pay­ment solutions.

Dur­ing his time as an aca­demic, Lars also con­sul­ted to a major city law firm, where he worked closely with the firm’s IT, tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions, and e‑commerce groups in rela­tion to both con­ten­tious and non-contentious mat­ters on a range of legal and reg­u­lat­ory issues relat­ing to tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions and elec­tronic com­merce. Lars was a fre­quent and well-known speaker on these top­ics and is widely pub­lished, includ­ing past con­tri­bu­tions to the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions volume of the Encyc­lopæ­dia of Forms and Precedents.

Lars sub­sequently held the post of Senior Vis­it­ing Fel­low at the CCLS until 2005. He went on to form Kalypton in order to deliver solu­tions that enable users to achieve reg­u­lat­ory com­pli­ance and evid­en­tial weight for their elec­tronic data, com­mu­nic­a­tions, and trans­ac­tions. In 2010 Kalypton exten­ded its product range to cre­ate an advanced elec­tronic and mobile pay­ments sys­tem called Tereon.

Lars is a liv­ery­man of the Wor­ship­ful Com­pany of Scriven­ers of the City of London.

Pub­lished reports by Lars include:

  • Digital Cash – The Legal Implic­a­tions, Chris Reed & Lars Dav­ies (IT Law Unit 1995)
  • Legal Reg­u­la­tion of Inter­net Bank­ing: a European Per­spect­ive, Chris Reed (IT Law Unit 1996)
  • A Model for Inter­net Reg­u­la­tion? Con­struct­ing a frame­work for reg­u­lat­ing elec­tronic com­merce, Soci­ety for Com­puters and Law, Bris­tol 1999.

Rel­ev­ant book chapters include:

  • Elec­tronic Com­merce, Chapter 10 Com­puter Law 4 ed 2, eds Chris Reed and John Angel, Black­stone Pub­lish­ing 2000.
  • Tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions, Lars Dav­ies and James Ibbet­son, Volume 39(1) The Encyc­lopæ­dia of Forms and Pre­ced­ents, But­ter­worths 1999 Reissue.
  • Devel­op­ments in Secur­it­ies Law and the Inter­net in the United King­dom, Year­book of Inter­na­tional Fin­an­cial and Eco­nomic Law 1999, ed Joseph J Norton, Kluwer aca­demic pub­lish­ers, 2001. FS_uncertainty

Luke Barton, Chief Business Officer and Investor

Luke’s career spans 25+ years in the IT infra­struc­ture and ser­vices mar­kets. Focused on tak­ing fledgling com­pan­ies through the usual growth chal­lenges to acquis­i­tion stage, whilst becom­ing suc­cess­ful and prof­it­able organ­iz­a­tions dur­ing the pro­cess. He’s highly exper­i­enced in identi­fy­ing new busi­ness oppor­tun­it­ies, cre­at­ing stra­tegic part­ner­ships and deliv­er­ing busi­ness out­comes. 

John MacLeod, Head of Strategy

John as adviser to Kalypton has 30 years of suc­cess­ful cor­por­ate exper­i­ence in lead­ing com­pan­ies deliv­er­ing sales tar­gets, mar­ket­ing pro­grammes and cor­por­ate strategies within the Chem­ic­als, Plastics, Fin­an­cial Ser­vices, infra­struc­ture fin­ance and tech sectors.

He is a struc­tured thinker (Degree in Economics/ MBA/ CIM Dip­loma in Mar­ket­ing), and can troubleshoot, for­mu­late plans and deliver them across dif­fer­ent audiences.

Post MBA (Imper­ial) he shad­owed the CEO and COO of the largest stock­broker in the UK and ran the strategy team to pro­duce the stra­tegic plan. He also iden­ti­fied an oppor­tun­ity to stretch the brand into bank­ing and iden­ti­fied and was involved in acquir­ing an off­shore bank.

He has spe­cial­ist know­ledge of the fin­an­cial ser­vices sec­tor and holds the IMC/ PCIAM. He is qual­i­fied to level 6, (CF30) and as a Private Banker he was respons­ible for HNW cli­ents worth £150m. Senior pos­i­tions held include MD, Head of Broker Sales (Barclays), and Head of Pen­sions at the largest stock­broker in the UK. He was also a Vice Pres­id­ent and Private Banker at Barclays Wealth and provides strategy and con­sultancy advice to a suc­cess­ful tech fund.

Tony Summers

Tony is Kalypt­on’s CFO hav­ing pre­vi­ously been an audit part­ner at Baker Tilly and before that eleven years at PwC in Lon­don. He has almost 25 years of exper­i­ence work­ing with com­pan­ies both lis­ted and private, primar­ily in the soft­ware and tech­no­logy sec­tors, but also worked for sev­eral years with a global credit card issuer.

Tony was a com­puter pro­gram­mer prior to study­ing account­ancy. This proved very use­ful when he worked on a major global soft­ware imple­ment­a­tion pro­ject. He worked closely with the soft­ware developers to redesign and fully field-test cer­tain aspects of the soft­ware’s robust­ness and functionality.

Tony enjoyed a second­ment as the Fin­an­cial Con­trol­ler of a Lon­don Stock Exchange lis­ted plc, where he lists integ­rat­ing a num­ber of acquis­i­tions amongst his key achieve­ments. He has been quoted in the fin­an­cial press and trade pub­lic­a­tions on a num­ber of top­ics, typ­ic­ally provid­ing insight or ana­lysis to par­tic­u­lar mar­ket or sec­tors and often the implic­a­tions of changes in tax legis­la­tion on those sectors.

Chris McDonald

Chris is an exper­i­enced senior pro­gramme man­ager with a back­ground in B2B, B2C, pro­fes­sional, tech­no­logy, edu­ca­tion, fin­an­cial, bank­ing, gov­ern­ment, com­mer­cial, and inter­na­tional cor­por­ate sec­tors. Ha has a broad range of man­age­ment exper­i­ence, and reg­u­larly engages with stake­hold­ers at CXO/COO level, to deliver cost appro­pri­ate solu­tions and busi­ness pro­cess change via emer­ging tech­no­logy solutions.

Chris has delivered on a range of pro­grams, ran­ging from busi­ness trans­form­a­tion, IT trans­ition, IT strategies, tech­no­logy road-maps, and pro­gramme res­cue, through to tech­no­logy eval­u­ation, stake­holder gov­ernance, pro­ject deliv­ery. He has demon­strable exper­i­ence apply­ing best prac­tice frame­works and meth­ods suc­cess­fully, includ­ing those of the Inform­a­tion Tech­no­logy Infra­struc­ture Lib­rary (ITIL), and has repeatedly delivered added busi­ness value through the adop­tion of new technology. 

John Cole

Based near San Fran­cisco, USA, John is a Sales Part­ner with Kalypton with extens­ive expert­ise in busi­ness applic­a­tion soft­ware, includ­ing PeopleSoft, Oracle and Lawson. Expert­ise includes con­sultat­ive and com­plex sales exper­i­ence in a wide vari­ety of business-to-business mar­kets. Accom­plished in ter­rit­ory and account plan­ning, uncov­er­ing rev­enue oppor­tun­it­ies, identi­fy­ing short and long term sales goals whilst effi­ciently man­aging resources to deliver res­ults and profit. Exper­i­ence at the exec­ut­ive level in nego­ti­ations and account plan­ning; Industry acu­men spans Man­u­fac­tur­ing, Dis­tri­bu­tion, Fin­an­cial Ser­vices, Retail, Food & Bever­age and Automotive.