Yell pell mell for IPO

Yell.com, BT's international directories and
ecommerce business, is displaying all the vital signs of a company getting ready to float.

In April, BT's head man, Sir Peter Bonfield, announced
that Yell.com would be prepared for an IPO later in the year. And gawd bless 'im, 'e wuz right.

So Yell.com, part of BT's Yellow Pages group, is blowing a raspberry to sceptics and ignoring current market jitters about dotcom IPOs.

Today it relaunched itself as an e-commerce portal for
both business and consumers - it has a new logo, a new-look homepage and lots of other revamped bibs and
bobs.

The Sunny Delight-coloured e-outfit chose to relaunch
itself today at the BBC Tomorrow's World Live Event in London as part of a multi-million pound
marketing blitz. No doubt it will hope for national
coverage thanks to its tie-in with the popular TV
programme.

Yell.com is also the main sponsor of the Planet
Internet show, which is part of the larger exhibition
here at Earls Court. More marketing bucks have also
been promised to pay for a TV ad campaign later in the
year - no doubt timed to coincide with the run-up to
the float.

In fact, Yell.com is involved in such a massive
publicity and marketing push to drive-up its image and
status as a high-profile dotcom, you can almost smell
it.

According to John Condron, Yellow Pages MD: "Our goal
is to continue to be the best information bridge
between buyer and seller, and to become as ubiquitous
and familiar online as the directory has been so long
in all our homes."

Of course, Condron wasn't on hand to say that himself,
this gem was part of a pre-prepared statement. In
fact, despite all the hype today no one was available
to answer any questions about the float.

They were there to talk about the relaunch. Period
They didn't want to talk about the IPO. Shame. ®