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To: Mark Fowler who wrote (79351)	10/1/1999 8:45:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Gst, ... here's some news on ebay to open 50 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. by year-end. nwfusion.com Mark, Would you not say EBAY has taken this category?? Glenn

To: Mark Fowler who wrote (79351)	10/1/1999 8:53:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

October 1, 1999 FLOYD NORRIS Company's Value Goes From $17 Million to $550 Million in 9 Months Related Articles Floyd Norris: Taking Stock in Trump the Company and Trump the Man (Sept. 24, 1999) America, Heal Thyself (Sept. 17, 1999) Use of Fiction in Corporate Accounting Will Go on (Sept. 10, 1999) Forum Join a Discussion on News from the Markets o one knows how many billions of dollars in market value have been created by the Internet. But whatever the number is, it is comforting to know that one can still get in and get rich fast. Consider Scandinavia Co. In just nine months, its market value has risen from $17 million to $550 million. In the quarter just ended, its share price went up more than 400 percent, making it the best performing stock in America. Moreover, it has done this with an investment of only a few million dollars. Before explaining just how this good fortune fell on Scandinavia -- a company registered in the Cayman Islands and run by a man who lives in Connecticut -- a look at its history may be in order. Scandinavia used to be a closed-end fund, traded on the American Stock Exchange. In February 1989 it was taken over by the Vik family, which made a business of taking over such funds that were trading below net asset value. Alexander Vik of Greenwich, Conn., now 44, was installed as the chairman and chief executive. The Viks decided to convert Scandinavia into an operating company, but, sad to say, success was slow in arriving. In 10 years of Vik management, the share price fell 30 percent while no dividends were paid. As 1999 began, its principal asset was a hotel in the Canary Islands. There were weeks when no shares traded. In retrospect, the first hint that something might be up came early last year, around the time the company began putting money into an infant Internet company called Mirror Image. It did not disclose that investment then, but the board voted to give the Viks options on a million more shares -- more than the total shares in public hands. (Adjusted for a split that took effect in September, the options are good for 1.5 million shares.) Then, on April 1 this year, the company said it had bought a majority stake in Mirror Image. A few months later, it disclosed that it had paid $6 million for that stake and had bought 32 percent more from an investor who chose to get out. The price it will pay for that additional stake will be based on a future appraisal of Mirror Image's value. If the appraisal reflects Scandinavia's current stock price, it is going to be a very expensive purchase. What is Mirror Image? It is a company that is developing a network it says will help move Internet data much faster. Through June 30, its sales were negligible. Vik, in a telephone interview Thursday, said revenues now "are growing, but they are not very large." Developing the network will take "tens of millions of dollars," Vik said, and Scandinavia has invested more money in Mirror Image. But he would not say how much. As the stock price climbed, Scandinavia ballyhooed contracts that call for it to buy computers from Sun Microsystems and software from Oracle. It may also have set a record by announcing a new stock split only nine days after the previous one took effect. That announcement Thursday sent the shares up $13, to $68, on volume of 219,200, or more than a quarter of the shares in public hands. Why two splits? "The board wanted to give people the opportunity to pick up some shares," explained a company spokesman, Ethan Rasiel of Edelman PR Worldwide. "There has been such explosive demand for it." That demand, it may be noted, has come without any disclosure of how much money Mirror Image has taken in from customers. Just think how much the stock will go up when investors actually have some information. nytimes.com