Directors
Dermot Jenkinson,
Chairman.
Dermot Jenkinson is Chairman and founder of beCogent and a principal shareholder in the business.
Dermot has a range of other business interests, including membership of the board of John Menzies plc, Chairman and principal shareholder of Verine Ltd, a manufacturer of gas log, coal and electric fires and accessories and a director and shareholder of Smiths Holdings Ltd, a London based corporate advisory and research firm advising plc’s.
He is a competent linguist and well travelled, having completed his education in the United States, France and Germany. He has also lived in the United States for 18 months. He was Deputy Chairman of an Anglo Dutch office supply company with a £250m turnover operating in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. The business was successfully sold in August 2000 to the SAMAS Group in Holland.
He was Executive Chairman of the Early Learning Centre since 1987 and oversaw the expansion of the company from 90 to 212 stores, operating in nine countries. In 1995 he negotiated and acquired the distribution rights to Nintendo for the John Menzies group.
As Executive Chairman of Smythsons, he successfully repositioned it from a loss making old-fashioned stationers, operating out of a small shop in Bond Street, into a profitable modernised business with five stores and a mail order operation in the USA. The business was sold on a multiple of 23 times profits.
One of the founder shareholders of Regal Hotel Group, he was a Director from its inception until the business was sold to a Malaysian group in 1999.