Internet companies seek market listing

By Andrew Bushe

DUBLIN — The rush to get in on the e-biz boom is leading to plans by more Irish Internet companies to seek stock exchange listings that will create a new wave of millionaires.

Website design company Trinity Commerce has changed its name to Ebeon and is re-focussing on e-business and enabling companies to get goods from their suppliers over the ‘Net.

Last June, Eircom paid £10 million for a 51 percent share in the company and it is now planned to float it next year.

Chief executive Bill Donoghue said the company employs 100 at present but this should increase to about 1,000 within three years. The company is making a profit but re-investing it.

"The business services market will be worth about three trillion dollars in the next three years and there aren’t too many global players out there so we are very confident about our growth, particularly in Europe and the US."

The Dublin-based Riverdeep Group, which provides educational software over the Internet for U.S. children, made a preliminary filing for a 75 million dollar IPO on the New York NASDAQ and in Dublin next month. The floatation could value the company at up to 500 million dollars.

Riverdeep has development operations in Ireland and Isr’l, and a U.S. sales and marketing operation in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Former primary school teacher Pat McDonagh, 48, who founded the company, owns 66 percent of the shares.

In 1993, he was also one of the founders of CBT, a supplier of computer-based training to the IT industry. He became a multi-millionaire when CBT was floated on the NASDAQ in 1995.

CBT is now known as SmartForce.com.

Riverdeep chief executive Barry O’Callaghan, who joined the company from Credit Suisse First Boston, will be amongst those who will become millionaires.