Ebeon Becomes First Dublin E-Commerce Business To Collapse

Lisa Ugur, Tax-news.com, London

22 January 2001

The malaise affecting dot.com companies the world over has now spread to the Irish Republic. Dublin-based technology company Ebeon has become the first e-commerce business to collapse there, and with it comes the loss of 170 jobs.

Ebeon, which is 51 per cent owned by telecommuications group Eircom, specialised in commercial applications of digital technology, offering clients products or services over the Internet or via mobile telephones. The firm decided to cease trading after its largest shareholders refused to cough up more cash. In fact, the situation had got so bad that the company told staff last week that it was unable to pay them.

Eircom had invested a total of I£21m in Ebeon, including around I£6m which went to the three leading Ebeon shareholders and founders, Jonathan Mills, Robert Booth and Norman Crowley. Eircom said last week that it decided to pull the plug on the business after the leading individual investors in Ebeon failed to match Eircom funds.

Ebeon said in a statement: 'It is with great regret that the board of Ebeon, the Eircom subsidiary which develops Internet services, has ceased trading.' It blamed the closure on the downturn in the market for e-commerce companies, yet employees and the press had been told that the business - which also has operations in London, California, Milan and New York - was to expand, take on extra staff and see a surge in revenues. A technician at the company commented: 'What we were doing was supposed to have been a big thing - a global play - but it obviously didn't work out.'

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