Baltimore swaps PKI for clean energy

Former security software vendor Baltimore Technologies Plc has been reborn as a supplier of clean energy. After selling all its software assets, the Dublin, Ireland-based company has decided against winding up operations and returning money to shareholders and instead plans an acquisition to give it a team experienced in energy markets.

By CBR Staff Writer

Baltimore was typical of a whole raft of companies that embarked on expensive acquisition programs during the dot-com era, seduced by forecasts about the future value of the security market. Reality caught up with it in July 2001, and with money running out, a restructuring program was undertaken in a bid for survival. Even cut-backs failed to give it a viable business and in May 2003 it announced it was looking for a buyer.

Since then it has sold its core PKI business to security and identity management provider Betrusted for 5m pounds ($8.2m) while Hewlett-Packard Co paid 8.3m pounds ($13.8m) for its SelectAccess web-based single sign-on software.

At its peak, Baltimore had a stock market value of 5.5bn pounds ($9.9bn). News of the new strategy pushed the shares down 9% giving it a value of 22m pounds ($39.6m).

This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire