Lycos Q4 losses grow eleven fold

Lycos has blamed rising marketing costs for growing its Q4 losses to E52 million (£31.9 million). This is an 11 fold jump from last years Q4 loss of E4.7 million. For the full year Lycos' losses grew to E99.7 million from 8.7 million in fiscal 1999.

Scoot.com rode a share price rollercoaster yesterday when it failed to produce a statement on rumours that Vivendi was poised to buy the online listings company until 4pm. Starting at 124p, the weekend rumours of Vivendi's buy caused them to soar to 191p. Then, just before the market closed, a statement refuting the buy was released, causing shares to plummet to 152p. Angry market traders were not unaware of the irony that a business set up to provide information as rapidly as possible had taken most of the day to deny the buyout. Vivendi currently owns just 22.4 per cent of Scoot.

Worldcom is thought to be considering a takeover of Intermedia Communications for $6 billion (£4.1 billion). Worldcom is thought to be interested in Intermedia's 54 per cent stake in Internet company Digex.

IT consultancy TTP Group plans to float its mobile arm TTPCom next month, valuing it at £350 million. Most of the money raised will apparently be taken by the company's 600 staff who jointly earn a majority share.

Data centre specialists CityReach is riding a burgeoning market with the announcement of another £100 million in funding and a planned float next spring. The craze toward outsourcing server hosting has brought out the analysts and figures of a £5 billion market by 2005 are being bandied about. A rival firm to CityReach was valued at £1.6 billion on the stock exchange in June.

T-Online, the Deutsche Telekom unit, has bought Spanish and Portuguese ISP Ya.com for E550 million ($495 million). ®

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