IT pioneer appointed SEC, IBSL chief

February 2006: President Mahinda Rajapakse in his capacity as the Minister of Finance and Planning has appointed Gamini Wickramasinghe as the new Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka (SEC) as well as the Insurance Board of Sri Lanka (IBSL), states a press release from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka.

Mr. Wickramasinghe graduated with an MSc in Systems Analysis from the University of Aston, Birmingham, UK in 1976 and worked for more than five years for Phillips Petroleum Company both in the UK and at their European Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium as the IT Manager for Europe/Africa and the Middle East.

He returned to Sri Lanka in 1983 and founded the Informatics Group of Companies, which today consists of seven operating companies with a work force of 600 employees.
In 1990, Informatics embarked on an ambitious IT Education project in collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University, and thereafter with University of Westminster and Keele University, all of UK.

The Informatics Institute of Technology (IIT) is today the largest private Technology University in Sri Lanka offering both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from British Universities.
In addition to carrying out large off-shore software development projects, Informatics have been instrumental in bringing foreign investors to Sri Lanka and have established a number of joint ventures with leading IT organisations from Sweden, Norway, Untied Kingdom and Australia to develop software, providing employment for more than 750 local IT professionals.