Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : ActiveAssets.com (V.AAA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dot who wrote (69)	3/23/2000 8:16:00 PM
From: charred	Respond to of 70

News out. Ms. Sally Whittall reports Active Assets & Associates is in the final stages of creating the largest business-to-business on-line industrial exchange in Latin America. Active Assets director, Simon Ridgway, says the company has reached agreements in principle with leading industrial auctioneers in each of the industrialized countries in Latin America. These agreements are expected to be formalized within the next few weeks. Mr. Ridgway also says the company has met with a large number of major Latin American manufacturers and financial institutions to review the Active Assets on-line exchange for the disposal and acquisition of excess inventory and that the response has been extremely positive. "Based on the results of our discussions to date, we are now very confident that our site will become the marketplace of choice for the sale and acquisition of major industrial equipment and excess inventory in Latin America," said Mr. Ridgway. Ridgway says that unlike most dotcom companies today that focus on building a Web site and then trying to find a market for its services, the Active Assets business model is based on the concept of establishing a market first and building a platform around it. "The principals of our company have very deep roots in Latin America and we have all worked very hard over the past 12 months to build a market for our company's services." "When we launch our Web site, we expect to have an enormous volume of big ticket, industrial items for sale due to the strength of the auction houses and manufacturers we will be partnered with." Ridgway also says the market for e-commerce in Latin America is growing at an incredible rate and that large technology companies such as Microsoft recognize the region's potential. As evidence of this, Ridgway pointed to a keynote speech delivered by Microsoft president Bill Gates in Miami earlier this week. In his speech, Mr. Gates predicted that Latin American spending on Web-commerce would reach nearly $11-billion yearly by 2003, driven by an Internet market that will have grown to approximately 30 million Latin American users during the same period. Active Assets expects 90 per cent of this e-commerce activity to be in the business-to-business arena. Mr. Gates said that Microsoft considers Latin America one of the world's most promising markets. Latin America sustained a five-year annual growth rate of 42 per cent in Internet services business and is expected to spend $1.6-billion for on-line advertising this year. "We are incredibly optimistic about the future of Latin America, because its countries are rapidly increasing their investment in the technologies and infrastructure needed to connect businesses, governments and educational systems," Mr. Gates said. Active Assets & Associates Inc. is assembling a network of the world's leading auctioneers of big-ticket industrial equipment and excess inventory. The services of those auction houses will be made available on-line later this year through the ActiveAssets.com Web site, a leading business-to-business exchange marketplace. The result: a seamless, worldwide network facilitating the exchange of corporate assets and excess merchandise.