Amazon chooses AOL over Yahoo!

Amazon is ending its three-year book marketing deal with Yahoo! and is now just concentrating on working with rival AOL.

The bookseller said it decided in spring that it would go with one or other of the portals. Yahoo! now has a book relationship with BarnesandNoble.com.

As both Yahoo! and AOL charge very high fees for tenancy on their networks the announcement is seen as a cost cutting exercise by Amazon, which has a cumulative loss of $1.5 billion for the last six years.

Intelligent Finance, the Internet and telephone bank from the Halifax, is within days of launching according to the

The bank failed to launch in July and August due to systems trouble.

Redbus Interhouse plc is looking to raise around £82 million, after expenses, to fund the planned capital expenditure involved with its accelerated Neutral Internet Colocation Facility roll-out programme and associated working capital - that's Internet hotels to you and me. It plans to have 13 Net hotels open by the end of 2001, and 21 by the end of 2002. Redbus Interhouse currently has nine sites which are either in operation or just about to open.

Psion has won shareholder approval to acquire Teklogix International Inc for Canadian $225 million in cash, and the issue of 5,363,368 Psion exchangeable shares and 12,106,606 new Psion ordinary shares. Details of the deal were announced in July.

Erstwhile dotcom-ers ClickMango, now in liquidation, are trying to get as much cash back as possible. This extends to attempts to sell their furniture and office equipment off to another Internet start-up as a whole package. The company is organising this itself as it is unimpressed with online disposal services.

By the piece de resistance, as pointed out by the FT has to be the company's inflatable boardroom. It was commissioned for £5,000 but the company says it will accept a lower offer.

In a spasm of humour, the financial paper suggests that the blow up pink plastic could be sold to Charles Saatchi as a "poignant symbol of Internet hot air." Nice one. ®

For more financial flim-flam visit Cash Register.