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 : CyberCash a buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Big Dog who wrote (3228)	4/6/1999 7:46:00 PM
From: TLindt	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3990

Suit settlement boosts Cybercash shares By Bloomberg News Special to CNET News.com April 6, 1999, 4:05 p.m. PT CyberCash shares rose 9 percent after the provider of electronic payment services won approval of a settlement ending a shareholder's lawsuit over its adoption of a controversial anti- takeover defense. Reston, Virginia-based CyberCash's shares rose 1.1875 to 14.625 in trading of more than a million shares after a Delaware judge approved separate settlements under which Cybercash and WinStar Communications, a wireless local phone service provider, agreed to drop their so-called "dead-hand'' poison pill defenses. "I'm satisfied the settlements are reasonable and fair and in the best interests of the companies and their shareholders,'' said Chancery Court chief judge William Chandler III. As part of the settlement, Cybercash and WinStar officials agreed to pay as much as $230,000 in legal fees to end suits brought by disgruntled shareholders of each company. They join at least 15 other companies that have dropped the defense in the wake of court rulings casting doubt on the validity of the anti- takeover strategy. The settlement resulted from suits filed by CyberCash shareholder Matthew Lubrano and WinStar stockholder Walter Hoffman in Delaware Chancery Court, challenging the companies' use of the dead-hand poison pills. Poison pills make takeovers prohibitively expensive by allowing existing shareholders to buy discounted shares when a hostile bid is made. The dead-hand version of the defense can only be deactivated by the directors who enacted it--even if they are no longer on the board. Chancery Court judge Jack Jacobs concluded last year that dead-hand pills make proxy fights for control of a company meaningless and unfairly take too much power away from shareholders. After Jacobs' ruling, companies such as Hilton Hotel Corporation, Texas Instruments, and Intuit voluntarily dropped their dead-hand pills. All are incorporated in Delaware. Lubrano and Hoffman agreed to drop their suits in exchange for an agreement by CyberCash and WinStar to abandon their dead- hand pills and pick up the tab for their legal expenses. CyberCash is a Reston, Virginia-based startup whose service allows Internet users to pay bills over the Web via credit card or electronic check. It's using $5 million raised through a recent stock offering to bankroll its new InstaBuy one-click shopping service, officials said today. The software is designed to provide security to Internet shoppers. New York-based WinStar provides wireless local and long- distance phone service in 30 U.S. cities, as well as high-speed data, Internet access and information services. Copyright 1999, Bloomberg L.P. All Rights Reserved. news.com

To: Big Dog who wrote (3228)	4/6/1999 8:56:00 PM
From: Big Dog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3990

Tuesday April 6 8:35 PM ET Online mall aims to reward shoppers By Margaret Kane, ZDNet MIAMI -- LookSmart Inc., a company that licenses its search engine portal to content providers and others, is developing an online mall for its partners that will let consumers earn incentive points when they shop. The mall will be available to all of LookSmart's customers, which include more than 150 Internet service providers, who will be able to market it under their brands. The RewardMall.com site, which should launch within two weeks, will feature up to 12 categories with up to six brands per category, officials at the San Francisco-based firm said. The company has partnered with CyberCash Inc.(Nasdaq: CYCH - news) to offer one-click purchasing. It will partner with Netcentives Inc. for its rewards program. RewardMall customers will be able to earn frequent flyer points through Netcentives, and use incentive points to purchase other merchandise and special products offered by the RewardMall merchants. The program combines two trends that have been growing in popularity on the Internet lately -- incentive programs and portal based shopping malls. Netcentives is one of several companies that has tried to lure consumers into online commerce by granting them points when they make purchases with selected merchants online. The programs work similarly to offline programs, allowing consumers to redeem their points for various merchandise, and, in Netcentives' case, frequent flyer miles. Online malls reborn The online shopping malls springing up on the portal sites are a new form of the malls that popped up several years ago. Virtually every portal site now has a section devoted to e-commerce. A new trend is to offer special features, ranging from a shared shopping cart to one-click shopping to specialized searches, that span the merchants featured within the shopping section. Incentives are the latest of these features. Michael Baum, vice president of e-commerce at the Go Network, a joint venture of Disney Corp. (NYSE: DIS - news) and Infoseek Corp. (Nasdaq: SEEK - news) said that features like gift certificates could also be a way to pull shoppers online. "Gift certificates bring people that haven't shopped online before into the experience," he said. That is even more attractive if the certificate can be spent in more than one place, such as a Go certificate that could be spent at any of the site's participating merchants. As for incentive programs, Baum said his company sees the potential being even greater given the offline positions his company has. Go money "We're working on a Go-wide incentive program where you could earn Go currency and use it to buy merchandise online and offline," including throughout the Disney corporation, Baum said. He would not give specific dates for either the incentive plan or the gift certificate program. While the incentive plan may be popular with consumers, they could run into trouble with merchants, who have balked at letting a portal site step in between them and their customers. Indeed, new research from Jupiter Communications, released at the Shopping Forum here, shows support slipping for high-priced, low-return tenancy deals with portal sites. Marc Johnson, director of digital commerce strategies at Jupiter, said the company took future revenues driven from planned incentive programs into account when it was forecasting the revenue figures released today. "They should be doing that, they need to be doing that" he said. "If they can extend it to the real world that makes it that much better."