Executive Chair Mark Crotty to continue guiding long-term strategic direction

PERTH, Australia, July 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — LumaCina, a global supplier and marketer of sterile injectable pharmaceutical products and a Bridgewest Group portfolio company, announced the appointment of Gary Bird as Chief Executive Officer.

Bird was appointed by Executive Chair Mark Crotty, who will continue to lead LumaCina’s long-term strategy, overseeing the company’s platform development and guiding its next phase of expansion in close partnership with the incoming CEO.

Bird joins LumaCina at a pivotal stage in its evolution as it expands its portfolio, while strengthening strategic partnerships and broadening its presence across Australia and international markets.

Bird brings more than three decades of leadership experience across the Australian pharmaceutical industry, with deep expertise in commercial strategy, market expansion and partnership-led growth. Over the past 13 years, he has led and represented companies including Orion Pharma, Medreich and Meda, working across pharmaceutical distribution, contract manufacturing, specialty medicines and consumer healthcare.

Earlier in his career, Bird held senior leadership roles with Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi-Aventis and Pharmacia, building extensive commercial experience across Australia and the Asia-Pacific region.

Bird served as a board member of Heartkids Australia and was an elected member of local government (Councilor of the Municipality of Hunters Hill, NSW Australia). He is a graduate of the Asialink Business Leaders Program (University of Melbourne) and holds a degree in Medical Science from the University of Sydney.

“LumaCina has reached a point where the opportunity ahead requires a leader with both deep pharmaceutical expertise and a proven ability to build enduring commercial partnerships,” said Mark Crotty, Executive Chair of LumaCina. “That combination made Gary the outstanding choice to lead the business.”

“Throughout his career, Gary has consistently built strong businesses by developing trusted customer relationships and delivering sustainable commercial outcomes. LumaCina has established a solid foundation, and I look forward to continuing to guide its long-term vision while working alongside Gary as we strengthen and expand the company’s position as a trusted supplier of sterile injectable medicines.”

Bird has already spent time working with LumaCina’s leadership team through the company’s strategic planning and business review process, providing him with a strong understanding of the business, its customers and its priorities.

“What attracted me to LumaCina is the company’s values, the quality of its people and the opportunity to establish LumaCina as a global pharmaceutical company,” said Gary Bird, Chief Executive Officer of LumaCina.

“Healthcare systems are increasingly reliant on trusted partners that can consistently deliver high-quality essential medicines. LumaCina is well positioned to meet that need through a growing portfolio, strong commercial partnerships and an unwavering commitment to quality, reliability and customer service. I look forward to working with our team, customers, suppliers, Mark, the Board and Bridgewest Group as we continue building a stronger, more resilient pharmaceutical business.”

Bridgewest Group welcomed Bird’s appointment and Crotty’s continued leadership.

“Gary’s appointment marks an important milestone in LumaCina’s evolution as an independent pharmaceutical company,” said Dr. Masood Tayebi, Co-Founder and CEO of Bridgewest Group.

“Mark has provided strong leadership as the architect of LumaCina’s long-term strategy and platform development, creating a durable foundation for future growth. With Gary leading the business and Mark continuing in his strategic role as Executive Chair, LumaCina has a leadership structure that combines continuity, deep sector expertise and commercial execution capability. We are confident they will continue strengthening the company’s position as a trusted supplier of sterile injectable medicines.”

About LumaCina

LumaCina is a healthcare business focused on the sale and distribution of pharmaceutical and medical device products in the hospital setting. LumaCina supplies sterile injectable pharmaceutical drugs, spanning high potency, blow fill seal, multi format vials and more, all manufactured in Perth Australia, to customers in Australia, New Zealand, Asia and Northern Europe. Looking forward, LumaCina is aggressively expanding capabilities, infrastructure, and industry partnerships, growing a robust pipeline of high-quality medications through an acquisition and licencing program. LumaCina is a Bridgewest Group Portfolio Company.

Contact:

Media Relations

info@lumacina.com.

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SOURCE LumaCina

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, July 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — CloudMile, an established AI and cloud service provider in Asia, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Tookitaki, a global pioneer in anti-money laundering (AML) and transaction fraud prevention, to jointly advance secure, AI-driven financial crime prevention capabilities for Malaysia’s financial services industry.

The agreement marks a shared commitment to support Malaysian financial institutions in defending against increasingly sophisticated, real-time financial crime by combining Tookitaki’s AI-driven detection technology with CloudMile’s expertise in secure cloud architecture, AI-ready deployment, and implementation for regulated industries.

As fraud accelerates, legacy defenses struggle to keep pace

With the rapid adoption of digital banking and instant payment rails such as DuitNow, financial fraud in Malaysia now moves in milliseconds. Mule accounts and complex fraud networks have become one of the most pressing challenges facing Malaysian banks, with illicit funds passing through layers of accounts before traditional systems can respond effectively.

At the same time, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) continues to raise regulatory expectations through updated anti-money laundering and financial crime frameworks. Traditional rule-based legacy systems, which flag thousands of false alerts, can no longer keep pace. Financial institutions need real-time, AI-driven and secure technology that detects multi-channel fraud before losses occur.

An integrated collaboration built on complementary strengths

CloudMile and Tookitaki are combining their strengths into a single, unified AI-driven financial crime prevention ecosystem.

CloudMile plays a key role in designing and implementing the secure cloud architecture that enables Tookitaki’s AI-driven financial crime detection capabilities to be deployed for regulated financial institutions. By combining its cloud infrastructure expertise with AI-ready deployment architecture, CloudMile helps Malaysian financial institutions modernize fraud detection with the scalability, reliability, and security required to support real-time financial crime prevention.

Tookitaki provides the detection engine through its flagship platform FinCense. Powered by Collaborative Intelligence, Tookitaki’s Anti-Financial Crime (AFC) Ecosystem enables compliance experts worldwide to share emerging financial crime typologies, so banks can deploy defenses against new fraud patterns in hours rather than months. According to Tookitaki’s internal data and customer case studies, FinCense’s Explainable AI has delivered a 50% reduction in false alerts and a 45% improvement in fraud detection cost efficiency for financial institutions.

Through the collaboration, CloudMile and Tookitaki aim to support Malaysian financial institutions in evaluating AI-driven approaches to financial crime prevention, with a focus on improving the identification of mule account networks, enhancing alert investigation efficiency, and strengthening responsiveness to emerging fraud typologies.

A shared commitment to Malaysia’s financial crime prevention ecosystem

Under the MoU, both parties will collaborate on joint solution development, go-to-market initiatives, and knowledge sharing for Malaysia’s financial services sector, with a focus on helping local institutions strengthen financial crime defenses while meeting regulatory requirements on security, resilience, and operational governance.

“As Malaysia’s financial services sector accelerates digital transformation, financial institutions need more than standalone fraud detection tools. They need a secure, scalable, and AI-ready cloud architecture that can support real-time financial crime prevention while meeting the reliability and security expectations of the banking industry. “CloudMile and Tookitaki have forged a strategic alliance combining local deployment accountability, specialized AML application capability, and secure cloud-native infrastructure to revolutionize financial crime compliance for high-growth digital ecosystems. This unified partnership is essential to deliver a complete, regulator-ready AML platform, seamlessly bridging Tookitaki’s proven FinCense detection engine and AWS’s resilient cloud foundation with CloudMile’s on-the-ground AI CCOE capabilities systems integration and local managed operations”

“Financial crime is a network problem criminals move across institutions, and no single organization can fight it alone. That’s why intelligence has to be collective, and controls have to be deployable. Our partnership with CloudMile solves exactly that: Tookitaki brings the ecosystem intelligence and detection capabilities, CloudMile brings the secure cloud infrastructure to deploy them. Together, Malaysian financial institutions get a smarter control environment — one that can adapt as threats evolve, not just react after the fact.” said Abhishek Chatterjee, Founder and CEO, Tookitaki

Exclusive executive briefing for FSI leaders

To mark the partnership, CloudMile and Tookitaki will co-host an invite-only executive briefing in Kuala Lumpur for C-suite leaders across Malaysia’s financial services industry. The briefing will explore how financial institutions can move from rule-based alert handling to real-time, AI-driven detection, covering regulatory expectations, secure cloud and AI deployment architecture, and approaches to reduce false alerts while strengthening long-term financial crime prevention resilience.

About CloudMile Group

CloudMile Group is a leading AI technology group in Asia, integrating core capabilities in AI, Security, and FinOps. It provides comprehensive solutions spanning data governance, cloud operational efficiency, and security resilience, helping enterprises accelerate transformation in the AI-driven era. As a multinational group focused on talent development and innovation, it offers customized services through its technical brand, CloudMile, and its strategic consultancy brand, Electrum Cloud. Dual-headquartered in Taiwan and Singapore, CloudMile serves over 1,400 enterprises across Taiwan region, Hong Kong SAR, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

For more information, please visit https://cloudmile.ai/en

About Tookitaki

Tookitaki is a financial crime intelligence ecosystem, helping financial institutions detect, prevent, and stay ahead of emerging threats through collective intelligence and deployable controls.

Powered by the AFC Ecosystem and FinCense platform, Tookitaki turns typology intelligence and risk patterns into controls that institutions can test, tune, and adapt — enabling teams to identify threats sooner, reduce false positives, and respond with greater confidence.

Trusted by leading financial institutions across Asia Pacific — including AEON Bank, UOB, Tencent, GXS Bank, GCash, Maya, Tyro Payments, and Fubon Bank — Tookitaki brings ecosystem-level intelligence to institutions that can no longer afford to fight a network problem alone.

For more information, visit www.tookitaki.com.

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SOURCE CloudMile

Plug and Play and Thales have entered a strategic partnership to accelerate the growth and international expansion of deep-tech startups through Thales’ global Trust My Tech (TMT), global open innovation, and business acceleration program.As part of the partnership, Plug and Play will implement its Innovation Framework within Thales—a structured approach designed to further catalyze and strengthen an organization’s innovation. Complementing this approach, the partnership will identify and support frontier startups across artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, aerospace, digital identity, quantum technologies, sustainability, fintech, communications, regulatory technology, and other emerging technology sectors, connecting them with opportunities to collaborate with Thales.Selected startups will have the opportunity to develop proofs-of-concept (POCs), pilot initiatives, and potential commercial collaborations with Thales’ regional and global business units, enabling real-world validation of their technologies and creating pathways to international markets.

SINGAPORE, July 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Plug and Play, a global innovation platform headquartered in Silicon Valley, has announced a strategic partnership with Thales, a global leader in advanced technologies across defense, aerospace, cyber and digital sectors.

Through this collaboration, Plug and Play will leverage its Innovation Framework to support Thales’ Trust My Tech (TMT), a global open innovation and business acceleration program, by strengthening Thales’ innovation capabilities, fostering collaboration across the innovation ecosystem, and connecting high-potential deep-tech startups with opportunities to collaborate with Thales’ business units to support the development, validation, and international expansion of innovative technologies. TMT Singapore will serve as the first hub for implementing Plug and Play’s Innovation Framework in the APAC region, acting as a launchpad for broader innovation efforts across Thales hubs globally.

Designed to help corporations navigate disruption and drive long-term growth, Plug and Play’s innovation framework combines strategic planning, organizational capabilities, and startup collaboration to accelerate innovation and build lasting competitive advantage. The partnership will also focus on scouting and evaluating frontier technology startups from around the world across a broad range of sectors, including artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, communications, digital identity, aerospace and space, sustainability, fintech, regulatory technology, quantum technologies, and other emerging technology domains. Selected startups will gain access to opportunities for collaboration through the TMT program, where they can engage directly with Thales’ experts and business leaders to explore innovation opportunities that address real-world industry challenges.

Startups will have the opportunity to develop proof-of-concept (POC) projects, pilot initiatives, and potential commercial collaborations that address real-world industry challenges. By facilitating these connections, the partnership aims to accelerate the adoption of emerging technologies while creating pathways for startups to expand internationally through collaboration with Thales.

“Trust My Tech enables Thales to identify, assess and deploy trusted external technologies faster, turning innovation opportunities into competitive advantage. Through our partnership with Plug and Play, we are further strengthening this capability by broadening our engagement with some of the world’s most promising deep-tech startups and fostering collaboration across the global innovation ecosystem. Together, we look forward to working with pioneering startups to explore and co-develop trusted solutions that address real-world challenges and create meaningful impact across sectors including cybersecurity, aerospace, digital identity, artificial intelligence and beyond.” – Marine Martinez, Trust My Tech Global Program Lead, Thales

“At Plug and Play, we believe that the most transformative innovations emerge when startups are given access to the right partners, markets, and opportunities. Our collaboration with Thales combines the strengths of a global technology leader with our worldwide innovation ecosystem to help startups accelerate their growth and commercialization journey. We are excited to connect pioneering deep-tech startups with opportunities to build, test, and scale solutions alongside Thales’ business units across Asia and globally.” – Jupe Tan, Managing Partner, APAC, Plug and Play

About Thales

Thales (Euronext Paris: HO) is a global leader in advanced technologies for the Defence, Aerospace, and Cyber & Digital sectors. Its portfolio of innovative products and services helps address several major challenges: sovereignty, security, sustainability and inclusion.

The Group allocates €4.5 billion per year in Research & Development in key areas, particularly for critical environments, such as Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Quantum and Cloud technologies.

Thales has more than 85,000 employees in 65 countries. In 2025, the Group generated sales of €22.1 billion.

About Plug and Play

Plug and Play is the leading innovation platform, connecting startups, corporations, venture capital firms, universities, and government agencies. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, we’re present in 60+ locations across five continents. We offer corporate innovation programs and help our corporate partners in every stage of their innovation journey, from education to execution. We also organize startup acceleration programs and have built an in-house VC to drive innovation across multiple industries where we’ve invested in hundreds of successful companies including Dropbox, Guardant Health, Honey, Lending Club, N26, PayPal, and Rappi.

Our Asia Pacific headquarters was launched in Singapore in 2010 and we are now present in five cities in Southeast Asia with additional locations in China, Japan, Korea and India. We work closely with both the public and private sector with programs, innovation initiatives and startup investments across the region.

For more information, visit https://www.plugandplayapac.com

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SOURCE Plug and Play