Much has been written about the collapse of the dotcom boom. First there were the post mortems of boo.com, clickmango.com, wowgo.com and others and there were the expert ruminations on the complexities for insolvency practitioners of valuing the failed dotcoms (given that their assets are often almost entirely intangible). This was followed by deeper analyses into what all this meant for the market and what the future held.
The biotech market was held up as a guide to likely future patterns. “This is not the end. The market will mature,” we were told. “The City will learn to differentiate between internet stocks – to sort the wheat from the chaff”. Anyone advising on new dotcom start-ups, or subsequent round financings, will know only too well how deep the new cynicism of investors goes. “The market will learn how to take advantage,” we heard. “We will start to see consolidation, starting with discerning buyers picking up the best of the failed dotcoms.”
