- guardian.co.uk, Sunday March 19 2000 11.11 GMT
- The Observer, Sunday March 19 2000
Everything went wrong for lastminute.com in the opening moments of the game. High-profile Internet entrepreneurs Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman are not only watching their share price fall, they are also being taken to court for anti-competitive behaviour.
A German travel agent has started legal proceedings against the pair's company, which floated last week for more than £500 million, alleging the lastminute name is misleading and breaches trade laws.
Silicon.com, the online IT industry news bible, unearthed the story to coincide with the company's first day on the stock market. Details of the impending court case were written into lastminute's revised company prospectus. John Bernstein, editor-in-chief of Silicon, said the case signalled the problems the company will face in trying to roll out its brand across the world, a vital move if lastminute is to justify its incredible value.
'This is a local difficulty for lastminute, but it illustrates some of the problems you have doing business across the globe,' Bernstein said.
Lastminute says it doesn't believe the legal proceedings, brought by travel agent L'tur Tourismus against its German subsidiary earlier this month will have a significant effect on its financial performance.
The German agent alleges that lastminute's marketing claims are misleading; the company has built its brand around portraying itself as an eleventh-hour bucket shop provider of discount services, whereas travellers can in fact book flights and holidays more than 14 days in advance.
Lane Fox, 27, and Hoberman, 31, attracted huge amounts of interest in Lastminute, and the price at which shares were sold was upped to 380p last weekend. On their debut, the shares rocketed to 555p, but fell steadily over the week. By Friday evening, brokers were offering 380p.
