WeDo CEO Runs for Political Office

After successfully negotiating the USD70mn sale of WeDo Technologies to Mobileum, Rui Paiva, the CEO and founder of WeDo, is to enter the political fray in his homeland of Portugal. He will represent Iniciativa Liberal, a new party that only recently stood its first ever candidates in this year’s European Union elections. Paiva is the head of the party’s list for the Vila Real region in the national elections to be held in October.

Vila Real selects five members of the National Assembly. However, Paiva has indicated that he expects he will continue to run WeDo, who are the leaders in the revenue assurance and fraud market market. This suggests he expects his party to be defeated in the elections. Iniciativa Liberal received just 0.88 percent of the vote in the EU election.

Mobileum will pay an additional USD28mn for WeDo if management meets the performance targets set for them by 2021. Portugal’s National Assembly will be elected again in 2023, meaning Paiva could be positioning himself for a more serious run at that time. He certainly has developed some of the key tools required for success in politics, being an avid user of social media and even launching a business that measures how successful people are at developing their online following.

Eric Priezkalns
Eric Priezkalns
Eric is the Editor of Commsrisk. Look here for more about the history of Commsrisk and the role played by Eric.

Eric is also the Chief Executive of the Risk & Assurance Group (RAG), a global association of professionals working in risk management and business assurance for communications providers.

Previously Eric was Director of Risk Management for Qatar Telecom and he has worked with Cable & Wireless, T‑Mobile, Sky, Worldcom and other telcos. He was lead author of Revenue Assurance: Expert Opinions for Communications Providers, published by CRC Press. He is a qualified chartered accountant, with degrees in information systems, and in mathematics and philosophy.