Board Member

BCG has been operating since 1999 and is the leading online classifieds group in the Baltics. BCG owns and operates fourteen leading vertical and generalist online classifieds portals in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The Group’s online classifieds portfolio comprises ten vertical online classifieds portals, including vertical portals for automotive, real estate and jobs and services, and four generalist portals, offering a wide range of products. The Group believes that in the online classified’s world, the number one in any market is in a tremendously strong position that is very difficult to surpass and has accordingly, through a combination of focused operations and selective acquisitions developed number one positions in all of its major portals.

The BCG leadership team have been together for a long time. The majority of acquisitions have retained the original founders of the businesses and yet the group operates in a highly collaborative manner with a lightweight central leadership group predominantly containing the CEO, COO and CFO. The rest of the leadership is directly involved in running the day to day operations of the portals.

The employees are incredibly proud of the BCG heritage, success and culture. All employees are shareholders in the company and the tenure of the senior managers across the business is over 14 years. Alongside this, the business has a tremendous focus on lean and efficient operations and despite operating 14 portals and having a broad technology estate across multiple countries.

The company operates in an overall market economy (the Baltics) that is growing strongly, and is positioned well in each of its individual markets. Additionally, the companies track record of acquisitions is expected to continue – in the Baltics, and potentially in other Central / Eastern European countries reflecting the ambitious culture of the business and its leadership.

After a successful period of Private Equity Ownership with Apax Partners, the company floated on the London Stock Exchange in July 2021. The company has chosen to expand the Board gradually over the next 2-3 years, ensuring the Board is independent and compliant under LSE rules. The intent is to keep the Board small and to encourage participation from all Board members in all Committees (in line with the culture of the company). The current Board is as follows:

• Trevor Mather (Chairperson). Trevor has a background in digital businesses and in classifieds with a history of being CEO of AutoTrader in the UK and ThoughtWorks, a global software consultancy.
  
• Ed Williams (Senior Independent Director and RemCo Chair). Ed is one of the founders of the online classifieds world as the founder and CEO of RightMove in the UK.
  
• Kristel Volver (Non-Executive Independent Director and Audit Committee Chair). Kristel has a background in finance and M&A and is currently the CFO of Eesti Media and a Board Member of MM Grupp based out of Estonia.
  
• Tom Hall (Non-Executive Director). Tom is a senior partner at APAX and has sat on the Boards of a myriad of companies including a number of leading online classifieds businesses.
  
• Jurgita Kirvaitene (Non-Executive Independent Director).  Jurgita was formerly a Director and member of the Management Board of PWC for Lithuania.  Subsequently she became General Manager and Board Member of a FinTech StartUp and supplemented this with being a member of an Audit Committee at Maxima Grupe.
  
• Three Executive Directors – the CEO Justinas Simkus, the CFO Lina Maciene and the COO Simonas Orkinas.

The company is looking for an independent Non-Executive Director to join the Board. It is important to the company, especially given the intent to keep the Board relatively small that this person is keen to participate in discussions across all of the Board’s responsibility and to both attend and actively contribute to all of the current committees (currently Nomination, Remuneration and Audit) as well as to participate in the ESG working group. 

There are 8 full Board meetings per year (which include all of the various committees). 1-2 are held in London each year, 3-4 will be physically held in the Baltics – primarily Vilnius and Tallinn, and 2-4 will be held remotely. For the physical meetings, the intent is to either split approximately 6-8 hours of meetings across two days or to fit it into one day and also to combine it with a Board dinner allowing those who need to travel to only need to spend one night away from home. For the remote meetings they vary between 4-6 hours each. In addition, for those months where there is no formal Board meeting we have a 90 minute remote call to go through current performance. 

The most important characteristic of the right candidate will be someone who fits and feels comfortable within the company and the Board culture – which is one of high collaboration (rather than heavy specialisation), open discussion (rather than heavy approval), involvement in all aspects of the Board (therefore being curious and inquisitive is an advantage) and highly supportive of the executives with the intent on being advisors rather than approvers. 

Given the current make-up of the Board it would be ideal if the person is from the Baltics and given the likely departure from the Board of APAX private equity, some form of experience with European M&A would be preferable (though not mandatory).  It is not necessary that the right person is steeped in a background of having served on many Boards.

The Board feels that they already have strong coverage of certain characteristics of the Company, including deep experience with:

• Classified businesses
  
• Digital and technology operations
  
• Pricing and packaging (which is the skillset at the heart of any leading classifieds company)
  
• Board Governance on the London Stock Exchange.