<http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4759214-103676,00.html>
Guardian | End of the line for Ireland's dotcom star Software firm saw boom and bust; now the core business is sold Geoff Gibbs Tuesday September 23, 2003 The Guardian Baltimore Technologies, the Irish software concern whose spectacular rise and fall epitomised the boom and bust of the dotcom era, reduced itself to little more than a cash shell yesterday by selling off the core business on which its fortunes were founded. The internet security company, which failed to find a buyer after putting itself up for sale this year, said it was selling its loss-making public key infrastructure, or PKI, operation to the American-controlled business beTRUSTed for £5m. PKI is used to make e-business secure and was the core technology behind Baltimore's heady but brief elevation to the ranks of FTSE 100 corporations before the dotcom bubble burst two years ago. At the height of its fortunes the Dublin company was valued at more than £5bn and employed about 1,500 people. The PKI sell-off marks the completion of a controlled programme of asset sales that has raised almost £21m over the past couple of months and will leave Baltimore with only a handful of employees in its head office and legacy technology support functions. "It is the end of the story of Baltimore as a software company. This is the final paragraph of the final chapter," chief executive Bijan Khezri acknowledged yesterday. Mr Khezri, who left Baltimore in 2000 and returned the following year to oversee its restructuring, said shareholders would have the opportunity to vote on what course the company should take by the end of this year - possibly at an extraordinary meeting to approve the PKI sale in November. Options included returning cash to shareholders, allowing another business to reverse into the company, or making an acquisition. "This transaction is our last significant asset disposal and will deliver on our commitment to eradicate operational cash burn and maximise shareholder value," he told shareholders. Baltimore shares fell 4.5p to 36.5p on news of the sale - a far cry from the £13.50 peak scaled in March 2000. The PKI business - which includes hundreds of customers in the government, telecommunications and financial markets - generated revenues of £19.3m in the year to last December but ran up losses of £11.1m before interest and tax. Mr Khezri said the need for scale in the global infrastructure software market made the PKI disposal an obvious move. "The long term competitiveness of the PKI business requires critical mass, and beTRUSTed has emerged as an excellent partner to take our PKI technology and customer base to its next level." Up to 80 of the PKI's 180 employees are expected to transfer with the business to its new owners. A few more will be retained by Baltimore but the company warned that about 60 staff face redundancy. The new owner, beTRUSTed, said more than three quarters of its clients had made significant investments in Baltimore's PKI technology, which it had implemented and operated for many years. "We believe beTRUSTed's ownership will provide the necessary stability and support for existing and prospective clients to build and deploy critical business applications that leverage Baltimore's technology," said the company's chief executive, John Garvey. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
