IPO bags AskJeeves a tidy sum

AskJeeves -- the upper-class meta search engine that lets you ask Jeeves the butler to trawl the Web for you -- has completed its initial public offering (IPO) of 3,000,000 shares of common stock at a price of $14 per share. The shares started trading yesterday on NASDAQ and rose quickly to more than $77 a share before falling back to $65 -- a rise of 364 per cent on the day. The company sold all the shares and the IPO was managed by Morgan Stanley & Co Incorporated, BancBoston Robertson Stephens Inc. and Hambrecht & Quist LLC. The underwriters have an option to purchase up to 450,000 additional shares from AskJeeves. ®