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Technology Stocks : Booking Holdings (formerly Priceline) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Hua who wrote (1397)	5/20/1999 10:30:00 AM
From: Robert Rose	Respond to of 2743

Funds must innovate online or die -- priceline ceo WASHINGTON, May 19 (Reuters) - The Internet will be an indispensable for mutual funds in five to 10 years and funds that fail to find new ways of doing business will be quickly weeded out, the founder of priceline.com Inc. <PCLN.O> said on Wednesday. "The web is a threat to the financial services industry if (it) wants to ignore the fundamental changes that the web is going to bring about," priceline.com's founder and vice chairman Jay Walker told fund professionals at the Investment Company Institute's 1999 General Membership meeting. "If you're not going to ignore it, then it's a phenomenal opportunity because inasmuch as the industry is information- intensive and we are changing the information environments, this will become a period of sea-change for the financial services industry," Walker added. The Investment Company Institute is the primary trade group for the U.S. mutual fund industry. Walker was part of a panel discussion titled "Lessons the Fund Industry Can Learn from the Internet Experience." Walker, who was compared to inventor Thomas Edison in a recent issue of Forbes magazine for his ability to accumulate patents on business processes, said fund families should think about protecting their ideas for Internet commerce. Financial service companies will no longer be able to survive by copying one another's good ideas, he said. Priceline.com is a one-year-old company that lets customers make low-ball bids on things like airline tickets, hotel rooms and automobiles. "One of the big changes that's coming is innovations can be made proprietary and you may not be able to copycat anymore," he said. "Businesses used to be lazy that way." The idea of patenting business practices has been controversial with some critics questioning the need for it. Walker's idea laboratory, Walker Digital, owns 12 patents, including two for priceline.com's operations. Walker has 240 patents pending. Other panelists said the Internet will "redefine" value and challenge mutual fund load and fee structures. Companies that add services to basic transactions will be under more pressure to justify the value of what is added, said Dell Computer Corp. <DELL.O> Vice President Richard Owen.