**OT** ICGE pays $450 mil for Venkat Srinivasan's eCredit stake.
ecredit.com
ecredit.com
Internet Capital to Pay $450 Mln for eCredit Stake (Update3)
2/24/00 7:55:00 AM
Source: Bloomberg News
(Updates stock price)
Wayne, Pennsylvania, Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Internet Capital Group Inc., an investor in electronic-commerce businesses, agreed to buy a stake in online financing broker eCredit.com for $450 million in stock in one of its largest investments to date.
Details of the agreement weren't disclosed. Closely held eCredit, based in Dedham, Massachusetts, connects companies to lending institutions, cutting the processing time for credit and financing applications.
Internet Capital is building a network of companies that link buyers and sellers of goods and services on the Internet. Last month, the company said it plans to at least double its investments in providers of online-commerce support services to $1.2 billion this year from about $600 million in 1999.
Shares of Internet Capital, based in the Philadelphia suburb of Wayne, Pennsylvania, fell 4 3/8 to 114 7/8 in early trading. The shares have surged almost 20-fold since the company first sold stock to the public in August.
Internet Capital yesterday named Chris Klein, a former McKinsey & Co. partner specializing in financial institutions, as managing director of financial services. Klein will oversee Internet Capital's investment in eCredit and will join the company's board, along with Internet Capital co-founder Ken Fox and Anthony Ibar-Guen, managing director for professional services.
eCredit.com links companies to financing firms and information sources including Dun & Bradstreet, Experian, Trans Union and Equifax. The company will offer Internet Capital partner companies and other businesses electronic access to trade credit, leases, loans and other financing alternatives.
eCredit.com's founder and chairman, Venkat Srinivasan, is a former professor at Massachusetts' Northeastern University who started the company as SSR Solutions in 1993. |
