Rémy de Tonnac, INSIDE Contactless board chairman, is named its new CEO
29 March, 2006
category: Contactless, NFC
INSIDE Contactless has named a new CEO–Remy de Tonnac, the company’s current board chairman–to replace its founder, Jacek Kowalski, who will focus on creating new companies within the contactless and near field communication (NFC) areas.
Founder and former CEO Jacek Kowalski to complete contactless ecosystem with the creation of new activity
Aix en Provence (France)– INSIDE Contactless has announced that Rémy de Tonnac, already Chairman of the Board, has accepted to be the company’s new CEO, replacing Jacek Kowalski, who founded INSIDE in 1995 and managed the company until now. On his side, Jacek decided to focus his activities on founding new companies within the contactless and NFC space as there is a huge potential for the value creation in the fast growing contactless market.
According to Jean Schmitt, Managing-Partner at Sofinnova Partners, “INSIDE Contactless is entering a new phase; during the last years it built the best contactless technology in the world, and now it is building a world class management infrastructure in order to scale its business. Rémy has an incredible track record in the security, smartcard and IC businesses, in all geographies. He is the right man at the right time in the right place.”
“I am very proud to be offered the superb challenge to lead a high potential company and great team” adds Rémy de Tonnac. “For the last 10 years, what has made Jacek Kowalski and INSIDE stand out is the foresight in recognizing the potential of the technology years before others and the drive and dedication to achieve this vision. INSIDE has the unique opportunity to become a world leader in a fast growing and pervasive industry. Today millions of contactless smart cards are issued around the world to facilitate payments, transit and access control, tomorrow our technology will be found in mobile phones, PCs, PDAs. to enable users to access content and services intuitively by simply touching smart objects.”
“Remy has been my personal friend for over 18 years, he has more than 10 years market penetration experience acquired as CEO Gemplus Asia and US, and for the last 4 years has been INSIDE’s Chairman. I believe that Remy is the right person to move the company to the next stage and to position INSIDE as the leading chip supplier in these markets,” says Jacek.”This change will allow me to free my time and attention to focus on the creation of new businesses having complementary activities mainly related to NFC and RFID markets in close partnership with INSIDE.”
Rémy de Tonnac’s profile
As a Partner of the VERTEX Management funds in Europe, Remy sits on the board of several technology and services companies of the VERTEX portfolio, including the chairmanship of INSIDE Contactless.
Prior to joining VERTEX in 2001 Remy was with GEMPLUS, the world leader for smart cards since 1988 and a member of the executive committee of the group since 1996. At GEMPLUS Remy ran the Americas operations of the group as Chief Executive Officer, based in Redwood Shores (California), and he was responsible for overseeing all field operations – including sales, marketing, manufacturing, technical support, research & development, finance and human resources in North and South America. Prior to that, Remy was the CEO for GEMPLUS Asia Pacific operations based in Singapore from 1991 to 1998. Remy holds a Master of Science Degree, with Honors, in Engineering & Applied Science from Ecole Centrale de Lille and a Degree in Economics from the University of Lille. Remy is married and a father of four children.
About INSIDE Contactless
INSIDE Contactless is one of the world’s largest providers of semiconductor chips (memory and microprocessor) and hardware platforms (couplers and readers) related to 13.56 MHz contactless technology. Our vision is to enable users to access content and services in an intuitive way by simply touching smart objects and connecting devices like mobile phones or PDAs just by holding them next to each other. Delivering the most cost-effective, reliable and secure technology for both contactless cards and NFC enabled devices, INSIDE provides high performance, open standard solutions for Payment, ID and Access Control.
Near Field Communications News and InsightExplore more developments dealing with the implementation of Near Field Communications, a short-range wireless technology that promises to revolutionize contactless identification, payment, access, and more. Click to visit NFCNews.
