A US company has agreed to buy for $550,000 certain assets of boo.com, including the domain name and any rights relating to the boo brand, the High Court heard yesterday. The intellectual property rights and computer system of the company are also being sold for £250,000 sterling. The company had sold sportswear over the Internet and shareholders had invested £100 million in its launch.
Mr Justice Quirke yesterday granted an order to Mr John Gleeson, for the provisional liquidator of boo.com ireland limited, which gives liberty to sell the "boo.com" brand name and the mailing lists of the company to E-Com.Inc, a Delaware corporation with primary offices at Madison Avenue, New York.
Mr Gleeson said the liquidator's main concern was to move quickly because the nature of the company's assets was that they would lose value quickly.
E-Com.Inc has offered to pay $550,000 for these assets and Mr Ray Jackson, provisional liquidator of boo.com ireland limited, and the joint provisional liquidators of boo.com group limited (the English company) have deferred the precise allocation of these monies between the Irish and English companies pending further investigation into exactly what assets are owned by both companies.
On May 22nd last, Mr Jackson, of KPMG, was appointed provisional liquidator to boo.com ireland, with a registered office at Harcourt Centre, Harcourt Street, Dublin. A winding-up petition relating to that company will come before the Irish High Court next week.
The company was incorporated in Ireland on December 3rd 1998, has no employees, and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hyannis Unlimited.
In an affidavit yesterday, Mr Jackson said the business of the company involved retailing sports goods and sportswear through the boo.com Internet website. Unfortunately, a proposal to proceed with the flotation of the English company on the London Stock Exchange earlier this year was cancelled due to the downturn in the fortunes of Internet companies and this led to the financial collapse of the company.
He said that, in practice, the English company had 250 employees and was running the group's operations.
The reason why a provisional liquidator was appointed both in Ireland and England was simply because the technology base of the group - its principal asset - would quickly diminish in value without proper maintenance. He was informed the opportunity for a successful sale would exist for only a short period.
He had been informed that initially 79 parties had contacted the English company's liquidators for information about the business but only six had lodged the deposits of £1 million sterling required for negotiations to proceed further.
He said the English liquidators had received an acceptable offer for certain of the assets of the English and Irish companies, namely the boo.com brand and the mailing lists. The proposed purchaser was E-Com.Inc and a sale and purchase agreement had been entered into.
The agreement was conditional on approval of the Irish High Court, which approval had to be obtained within 48 hours from yesterday.
Mr Jackson added that, because this was the first major failure of an Internet company, the question of valuing the assets on a winding-up scale was extremely problematical. Because of that, he and the English liquidators had adopted a pragmatic approach.
The value could be gauged only from the market's interest in acquiring the assets. He and the English liquidators believed it was very unlikely a better offer would materialise.