At the height of the tech boom, London-based EO was Europe’s most comprehensive electronic system for distributing freshly minted shares to brokerage firms and investors. EO helped to sell more than 90 mainly tech IPOs, including mobile phone companies Orange and Carphone Warehouse.
When the IPO market collapsed, however, so did EO. Its backers, led by U.K. private equity investor NewMedia Spark, wrote down most of a $30 million investment.
But now that the tech market and IPOs are boisterously back, so is EO. “Within six months we will have it operating, with a new group of shareholders,” says Clem Chambers, the 41-year-old entrepreneur who runs EO’s parent, ADVFN, a London-based investor Web site with 300,000 subscribers.
Chambers’ company foresightedly snapped up EO’s technology back in February 2003 for a rock-bottom $288,000. “The [ADVFN] shares we used in that transaction have tripled in price, which tells you that our timing was pretty good,” says the former video game developer. “For us, it was a no-brainer -- we bought an option on an option. It’s a business waiting to happen.” Until the next tech collapse.
