Chris Taggart

Chris Taggart is the cofounder and CEO of OpenCorporates, the largest open database of companies in the world. OpenCorporates’s primary mission is to open up and connect company data from across the globe, making it more useful, usable, and understandable for the public benefit. OpenCorporates has already made a clear and significant impact. First, its database of over 160 million companies in 130 jurisdictions is a critical tool for investigative journalists, NGOs, academics, due diligence professionals and government agencies from across the globe. Notable users include the ICIJ’s Panama and Paradise Papers investigations, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, the BBC, the Financial Times, the Times, Global Witness, and Transparency International. OpenCorporates has also been the leading force behind the push to make company registers open data for access to all—with numerous successes. This public benefit mission is supported by an innovative virtuous-circle, public-benefit business model, whereby the free public access is subsidized by commercial users who paid for data in bulk, having confidence in its quality due to the intrinsic many-eyes feedback loop. Commercial users include Mastercard, Capital One, Factset, Transferwise, and PwC.

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