In 1996 it was bought as an investment prospect for £400,000 by Mr Rooney and Dermot Desmond, who is better known these days for his shareholding in Manchester United football club. Like Professor Beker, they saw the looming market for secure electronic document software, but from the service angle rather than from the point of view of creating the software products.By 1998 Professor Beker realised that Zergo’s growth was held back by not being able to offer advice and service before and after selling his software to a client That made a merger with Baltimore a natural fit. They merged in December 1998, with Dr Beker as chairman and Mr Rooney as chief executive.That began the process that Mr Kherzi now openly refers to as a roller-coaster. Mr Rooney found people stopping him in the streets of Dublin to thank him for his success at Baltimore. But Professor Beker’s E-Learning Foundation dream was already beginning to take up more and more of his time. In September 2000 he left Baltimore entirely, saying: “Baltimore has got to a point where I can let it go. I want to focus on other activities, working for young companies.”Baltimore’s stratospheric share rating meant that the slightest wobble was going to cause a crisis of confidence among investors.

And Baltimore’s reliance on fat contracts from the likes of major banks and other financial groups meant that any delay in signing on the dotted line before the end of a quarter would spark a revenue warning – profits, let alone dividends, never entered the equation once the bandwagon really started motoring.In April 2001 Baltimore issued two such warnings in three weeks. Mr Rooney said: “As many other leading technology companies have stated, the general slowdown of the global economy has resulted in some sales being deferred, but not cancelled.” Three months later Mr Rooney resigned with Professor Beker saying of him: “He had a great deal of energy, but clearly one of the weaknesses of the current management team is that it doesn’t have people who have been through bad times.”The following month the company declared a half-billion pound loss and the shares valued the business at £122m. Mr Khezri, a Persian-German banker, took the chief executive’s reins in the form of company doctor to restructure the business.”It was a bloody mess,” he said yesterday. “In terms of what went wrong, our pricing was geared to the value of our software product, but in addition we were giving a lot of service because each contract was really a project we had to manage But we got no credit in our pricing for the service element. It was like a free add-on.”By last year, as the global recession and bear markets continued to bite, especially on a company primarily serving the financial sector, Baltimore haemorrhaged cash to the tune of £20m a quarter. Mr Khezri tried to stabilise it by focusing on the high end of the market, but no longer had the resources to see it through to the next upturn.

“We have enough money for another two years,” he said, “but is there any point in going on?”He decided there wasn’t, and put the company up for sale. By this time next year it may not exist, except as a corporate ghost living on in another business.Professor Beker is still on the boards of young technology companies, and pursuing his laptops-for-all dream. Mr Rooney? In June he became chief executive of the Irish Football Association Neither was available for comment yesterday I asked Mr Khezri if he was still in touch with them “No,” he said, “but we exchange Christmas cards.”. The investment house Schroders was sacked as the manager for £580m of pension assets for Nationwide Building Society yesterday because of poor performance. Institutional clients, including Vanguard Group, have withdrawn £2.5bn in the first half of this year. Schroders’ share of the market has declined to 9 per cent last year from 13.5 per cent in 1999, according to a recent report from Morgan Stanley.The fund manager revealed earlier this month that first-half profits increased by 69 per cent as it was managing to stem the exodus of clients, as well as attract new money into its bond funds and cut costs through job losses. The outflow of funds also slowed from £4.4bn in the first half of last year.Schroders had managed a mixed portfolio of equities and bonds for the £850m Nationwide pension fund for the past five years.

BGI will now manage £370m, or 45 per cent, for Nationwide in funds that will be invested solely in equities. Fidelity will oversee a £210m bond portfolio and UBS, which managed the fund alongside Schroders, will manage the remainder in index tracking funds.”We have been disappointed by Schroders’ performance and decided it wasn’t part of that specialism we wanted,” a Nationwide spokeswoman said.. They have come from a former employee, James Middleweek, who is suing Collins Stewart for unfair and wrongful dismissal in a £3m claim. He alleges that he was castigated for blowing the whistle on misconduct at the company. Mr Smith said the claims were “made by an individual whose credibility and motivation are highly questionable”.Shares in Collins Stewart have fallen by more than a fifth since the row erupted last month.