FiscalNote acquires maker of ‘EU Issue Tracker’

FiscalNote is as good as its word. As we reported in September, the four-year-old Regtech firm with an eye on automating the federal government, is in acquisition mode. The newest addition is Shungham, a four year old Brussels-based regulatory intel firm.

The announcement comes as CEO Tim Hwang is attending the World Economic Forum in Davos.

It was a pleasure speaking in Davos today at the World Economic Forum (WEF) about the impacts of technologies like @FiscalNote on the global political system. Looking forward to more conversations. pic.twitter.com/SMNfLsdchZ

— Tim Hwang (@timthwang) January 23, 2018

“As the changes in the global political landscape are giving rise to new and evolving needs in political advocacy, our clients has been asking for more actionable intelligence about the EU and its member states, along with other strategic global regions,” said Tim Hwang, cofounder and CEO of FiscalNote in a statement. “Shungham adds a much needed human element to our AI-powered intelligence, that will give our clients more insight into legislative and regulatory issues at all stages of development.”

FiscalNote helps companies and nations including South Korea, Canada and Mexico, track and analyze millions of pieces of legislation and regulations. It also helped the Federal Communications Commission sift through 22 million public comments last year, including a finding that more than 1 million pro-net neutrality messages were fraudulently submitted by bots. FiscalNote’s platform now includes data from 20 countries, and Hwang hopes to reach every country on Earth.

With the takeover also comes FiscalNotes operation of Shungham’s EU Issue Tracker, which has helped clients like Coca-Cola, BMW, Nestle and L’Oreal understand market conditions in a region with multiple countries and varied legislative reporting requirements. Last year, the company acquired grassroots advocacy tool VoterVoice, and, in 2015, MyCandidate, an app that enables South Koreans to interact with members of the General Assembly through grassroots campaigns and direct messaging.

“As Brexit nears, there is a rapidly growing need for strategic intelligence on both the EU and its Members States among our clients, and joining FiscalNote gives us the ability to rapidly scale our human-curation approach and apply automation for the first time,” said Michel Ehrlich, CEO of Shungham, in a statement. “The combination of our depth of intelligence in this market along with FiscalNote’s collaboration and issues management tools will allow our clients to more easily take strategic action on issues that affect their business.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.