Scoot.com said today it had agreed to buy Loot, the UK consumer ad newspaper. Oxford-based Scoot will pay £178 million cash and give five million shares to Loot, as well as taking over two million pounds of its debts. The Loot brand name will be kept, with Scoot saying it expected the newspaper and Loot's online service to add £20 million to sales by 2003.

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The former chairman of Comet is to launch an e-tail site selling white goods. Eddie Styring will spend £3 million advertising his Helpful Home Shopping Company. Still, if this e-commerce venture fails, his domain helpful.co.uk could be worth a few bob.

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T-Online is rumoured to be ready to fork out £5 billion for monster ISP, Freeserve. Press reports at the weekend claimed NTL had become the favourite to buy the ISP. ®