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Article: Online investment banks face rocky ride in wake of dot-com troubles.
- Article from:
- Financial News
- Article date:
- May 21, 2001
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Financial News Publishing Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Every investment bank has been hit by the collapse of the European IPO market and the meltdown in technology stocks. But a whole sub-sector of the industry is on the verge of extinction as a result: the online investment banks which risk going the same way as most other dot-coms.
A year ago, the market was awash with mini-investment banks which specialised in distributing IPOs online. As investment bankers jumped to join internet start-ups, some of their colleagues spotted a nice little earner in helping take those start-ups public, using the internet itself for distribution.
The business case was simple and the potential seemed vast. As retail investors ...