Gerry Gualtieri’s Long Game Started at Six

Gerry Gualtieri was six when he started judo. Much later came the financial technology jobs, the software acquisitions, the chief executive titles and the aviation data business. The sport had already claimed its place. By the time British Judo announced him as its next chair in August 2023, he had spent decades doing something rather more convincing than adding an interest to a corporate biography: turning up.

British Judo credits him with giving personal money and time to grassroots and elite development, and sponsoring clubs and events. In November 2023 he addressed its annual awards evening as the new chair, then handed the stage to his predecessor, Ronnie Saez. There was a change of leadership, a room full of people who cared about the same activity, and work to carry on with.

That moment makes a useful entrance to a working life more often described through transactions. Gualtieri co-founded ClearCourse and became its first CEO. He later moved into aviation intelligence as CEO of IBA. The companies have changed. Judo has remained on the calendar.

Eleven years learning the financial plumbing

Before ClearCourse, Gualtieri worked in the systems that help investment businesses function. He spent eleven years at Thomson Financial, rising to commercial director of its Investment Management Group. Later roles included chief operating officer at Fidessa LatentZero and managing director of global sales at Corvil, a specialist in latency management. It was a career close to the machinery behind financial decisions.

In November 2009, Tradar named him its incoming CEO, with the job due to start early the following year. Tradar supplied portfolio management software to the hedge fund industry. He succeeded Tony Swei, who stayed involved in the transition as a consultant. Gualtieri was arriving at an established business with customers, products and a reputation to develop.

By February 2011, Tradar counted more than 240 clients across 35 countries, with offices in London, New York and Hong Kong. Asked what his job involved, Gualtieri described balancing internal and external responsibilities. His answer included a tellingly practical detail: “A great deal of my time is spent with our clients and industry partners.”

Product development supplied the less glamorous half of that conversation. Tradar’s 2010 Insight update added order management and compliance capabilities to its portfolio and accounting software. The aim was to help investment teams work through fewer disconnected programmes. By December 2013, Gualtieri was executive managing director for EMEA and president of the Tradar portfolio management business at Eze Software Group. The work still concerned the joins: better communication, reporting and operational workflow.

Four people, then fourteen deals

ClearCourse began in October 2018. Gualtieri and Joshua Rowe, its founding head of mergers and acquisitions, had backing from Aquiline Capital Partners. The initial territory was membership software and related services, a market whose products could be important to their customers without ever becoming familiar names outside it.

The first anniversary offered an unusually compact measure of the pace. In twelve months, ClearCourse had made 14 acquisitions. Its central team had grown from four people to 19. Those are two different counts: the small team at the centre and the businesses being brought into the group. Keeping that distinction matters when imagining what Gualtieri was helping to build.

Silverbear joined in December 2018. It made membership management software and had implemented programmes for more than 65 organisations, whose members numbered over four million. That was useful knowledge already at work. ClearCourse’s proposition was to give businesses like it resources and support for further growth, while bringing membership management and payments capabilities into the same group.

NetXtra followed in 2019, adding digital services for membership organisations. The opportunity included offering complementary products to one another’s customers and accessing strategic and operational guidance. Here was the commercial logic in miniature: companies with adjacent skills could introduce each other to work they already understood.

For a founder, this is a different assignment from building a single application and asking everyone to adopt it. Each acquisition brings people who know their own customers. The central group has to find useful things to do for them. An organisation chart can announce that businesses belong together. Customers provide a rather less accommodating test.

The till belongs in the story

Payments became a concrete expression of that idea. ClearCourse launched its proprietary acceptance solution, ClearAccept, in 2021. By October, it reported more than 300 merchants and over £130 million in contracted payments flow. That figure described contracted flow, rather than company revenue. It is a distinction worth preserving before a large number begins a second career as folklore.

Gualtieri placed payments within the group’s founding ambition to help technology companies become more efficient and grow. “Streamlining payments is a big part of this,” he said. ClearAccept offered online and point-of-sale payments, giving the software businesses another capability to bring to their customers.

The acquisition of Pursuit Software in August 2022 makes the approach easier to picture. Based in Norwich, Pursuit supplied jewellery retailers with stock management, point-of-sale integration, and repair and manufacturing functions. Its customers included Fraser Hart and Hamilton & Inches. A jeweller’s software has to keep track of rather more than the pleasant moment when somebody chooses a ring.

Pursuit’s managing director, Mike Burns, continued to lead the company. The plan included investment and integration with ClearAccept. Gualtieri welcomed both the move into jewellery software and the addition of another East Anglian business. The details matter: this was a particular team, in a particular place, working on a particular trade.

A founder hands over the keys

By its fourth anniversary in October 2022, ClearCourse reported over 900 employees and almost 40 businesses. Its language centred on integration, collaboration and investment in people as well as companies. The acquisition count was only one part of the job; the group still had to make its growing collection work together.

On 17 January 2023, ClearCourse announced Christina Hamilton as its next CEO. Gualtieri would move to a non-executive board role. Hamilton joined from Stripe, with earlier experience at Xplor and Western Union. The announcement described approximately 25,000 corporate customers and nearly 40 UK acquisitions. It also set out a next phase focused on increasing organic revenue.

The handover gives Gualtieri’s founding role a proper boundary. He led the business from its inception through those early years of expansion. Hamilton inherited the next operating chapter. A founder’s name can stay attached to a company long after the person has taken on a different daily assignment.

Another kind of flight plan

That assignment arrived in September 2023 at IBA. The aviation intelligence and advisory business brought him into a market of aircraft valuations, fleet decisions and financing. His background remained relevant: software, data and analytics had occupied much of his working life. At IBA, those tools served another set of specialists.

The company already combined advisory expertise with digital products. Its team includes people responsible for the IBA Insight platform, technology, valuations and aviation economics. Gualtieri joined as CEO to lead growth and development. The appointment also allowed Phil Seymour to focus on his role as company president.

In April 2026, IBA entered a new investment chapter with bd-capital. The firm announced that it would partner with Gualtieri and the management team; Graham Elton became chairman. Under previous investor TPA Capital, IBA had developed its digital offering around a proprietary dataset built through years of aviation work.

By 2025, half its revenue came from recurring annual digital platform subscriptions. The attraction is understandable: information gathered through specialist work can become a product customers use repeatedly. It also puts Gualtieri’s latest role in perspective. He is leading a business with a history of its own, while helping develop how that expertise reaches its market.

The appointment that began in childhood

Alongside IBA sits British Judo, where Gualtieri’s connection predates any executive appointment. When his chairmanship was announced, he spoke about responsibility and making a meaningful difference. Later in 2023, as chair-designate, he welcomed board appointments bringing marketing, communications and events experience. Digital engagement and the experience of fans were among the areas he wanted the organisation to address.

In August 2026, the inaugural European Judo Championships of Uniformed Services brought military, police, fire and other service athletes to the University of Wolverhampton’s Walsall Campus. For Gualtieri, the occasion had a family connection. His father had served as a police officer for 30 years. Watching those services represented in the sport meant something beyond the success of an event.

He wanted British Judo to host more European competitions and spoke about the importance of such opportunities for development. He was also looking forward to the team competition. “I love a team event,” he said. It is a small, direct remark, refreshingly free of the vocabulary that tends to gather around a chief executive.

“I love a team event.”

Gerry Gualtieri · August 2026

The six-year-old who took up judo could hardly have drawn up a career plan containing hedge-fund systems, jewellery software and aircraft intelligence. The adult has made room for all of them. ClearCourse explains why his name appears in accounts of British software consolidation. IBA explains his current commercial work. Judo explains why a biography that stops at the office door leaves out a commitment that came first.