Simon Enoch, Baltimore Technologies

When Simon Enoch joined Zergo – soon to become Baltimore Technologies – in August 1998, he was well-equipped to steer the group’s legal services through the period of intense activity that followed.
For the four previous years, Enoch had been the head of legal at the beleaguered trailer rental group Central Transport Retail (CTR), formerly Tiphook. He was brought into the company in 1994 after a bankruptcy petition was served on the CEO Robert Montague and following the disbandment of the existing management, including the 10-strong legal team.
As the sole legal adviser, he took charge of the legal fallout, saw through the reconstruction of the group and managed the litigation arising from the debacle.
In 1998, when CTR was sold to GE Capital, Enoch made the decision to move on. “I had no desire to be one of an army of lawyers. I am not a corporate man.”
Having picked up the pieces at CTR, Enoch says it was good to get into Baltimore at an early stage in the group’s life.
“I had seen what could happen in a growing company and I was better able to identify the pitfalls,” he says.
Enoch was the first in-house lawyer and company secretary at Zergo. Since he joined, the company has grown from 120 employees to today’s 1,200, with a presence in 38 cities in 17 countries.
Enoch moved to Zergo as it had just completed its move from the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) to a full IPO on London’s official list and was on the point of its Nasdaq listing and merger with Baltimore.
When he joined the company that was to become the Irish darling of the technology revolution, Enoch had never set foot in Ireland. The first time he trod on Irish soil was when he went to work on the due diligence for Zergo’s merger with Baltimore.
But he has never looked back. With a listing in Ireland, the UK and New York, Enoch finds his time divided and in the last year has notched up many air miles.
He spends two to three days a week in Dublin and the rest in the UK, unless there are any international deals going on. ‘Have lap top, will travel’ is his philosophy.
In an ideal world, he says, the group should probably have brought in an in-house legal function at an earlier stage.
To him, the primary function of the in-house lawyer is to minimise the distraction to the management time and this is where he believes the team has added value.
In support of this, he refers to the fact that Zergo had a fall off in trade as a result of the flotation before he joined.
“If management has to deal with the legal processes, it is inevitable that it will eat into resources, which could be better focused on growing the business,” he says. “As a general rule, lawyers in private practice do not communicate in the same language as management. Management can struggle on due diligence and verification, not realising how much time it is taking.”
For Enoch, the role of the in-house team is management of the legal processes rather than the nitty-gritty of the legal intricacies of the advice.
He is firmly of the school of thought that sees in-house lawyers as the conduit between the business and outside advisers. So despite the level of activity in the past two years he has brought in only one assistant in the UK. There is also a lawyer in the US who was brought on board following the Nasdaq listing last year.
“We do not want to have a mini in-house law firm,” Enoch says. “There is no cost advantage to that.”
He prides himself on playing a crucial role in the success of the company. “We have kept the acquisition process as slick as possible. The company could not have grown in the way it has if every time there was an acquisition it was a distraction to the management. The CEO and I keep in touch but, for instance, he did not have to fly over on the Canadian deal until the last day. There is no point in management sitting bored rigid in a smoke-filled office until the early hours of the morning.”
His two years at the group have been a roller-coaster ride for the e-commerce market. He has seen the share price rocket from £1.60 to £14.00 in March last year and then plummet again to rest at the current share price of £3.00. But this has not fazed Enoch who, with a share option package himself, watched his own financial position rise and fall along with the market.
He says the share option attractions of the technology market were not his prime motivation for joining the group and claims that he had no idea at the time he joined that the e-commerce boom was just around the corner.
“I do not think anyone could imagine back in 1998 that it would grow into the successful company it has,” Enoch says.
“I almost defy anyone to say that they know how high the tech market boomed in the way it did. I do not think anyone thought it could carry on in the way it did last March. The market is now levelling out. It is logical, but the internet is definitely here to stay.”