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Freeserve shares yo-yo

Up and down like a bride's nightie

Freeserve has led the way in a revival of technology shares. Of course its all down to the takeover deal by Deutsche Telekom's T-Online being back on the cards. The ISP's share price climbed 49p to 381p, putting it at the top of the FTSE 100 Indexperformance chart. Dixons also fared well, as the market saw the majority holder in Freeserve rise 22.5p to 296p.



Football player trading portal Interclubnet.com will float on the AIM for £40 million, it announced today. It expects to get £4.2 million spending money from the move. Top clubs including Manchester United, Chelsea and Southampton have accepted share options in the outfit. The idea is to get clubs to battle for key players over the Internet.



The company charges clubs £15,000 upfront and then £2,000 a month to use the network. Interclubnet reckons it can get 80 to 90 per cent of the world's top clubs to sign up with 12 months.



BSkyB has coughed up £1.1 billion for control of Open, the start-up interactive TV service. Its share percentage has shifted from 32.5 per cent to 80.1 per cent. HSBC, BT and Matsushita agreed to sell their holdings. Open is set to be a forerunner in the expected NetTV revolution. It uses a set-top box permanently connected to a phone line.




Online broker - E*Trade - is set to acquire the San Francisco-based provider of personalised securities portfolios, Electronic Investing Corporation (eInvesting.com) for an undisclosed sum. The agreement should make it easier for E*Trade punters to invest regularly across a broad portfolio of stocks.




The share price of the Carphone Warehouse has taken a hit after Friday's IPO when some investors decided to make a quick buck. Yesterday it fell below the 200p offer price despite peaking at 225p. At lunchtime today the stock had rallied somewhat to 198.5p.




Vodafone is closing in on European domination now that it has acquired a majority stake in the Spanish network, Airtel. A share swapping deal with a group of Spanish banks brings its total holding in the Spanish company to 65.2 per cent. The UK phone giant said it would issue between 2.4 billion and 3.2 billion new shares in exchange for the stake in Airtel.




The IPO of Wanadoo, France Telecom's Internet arm, is expected to be oversubscribed when details of the proposed float are published today. According to today's

FT

, figures circulating last night suggested the institutional bit of the offer would be as much as 16 times subscribed, and the retail segment four to five times. Shares in Wanadoo are expected to start trading on the Paris stock exchange tomorrow.




Directors at Ebookers have dug into their own pockets to reassure would-be investors in the loss making online travel business. Execs have invested (£6 million) £4 million of their own cash, while the dotcom is reported to be in talks with two travel groups and four financial backers for the extra $39 million (£26 million).



The fundraising is expected to be finished over the next few weeks. Ebookers is currently losing $3 million a month, and the cash would help the group to reach positive cash flow by the end of 2001 or start of 2002.

For more stories from the e-conomy, check out Cash Register. ®

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