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BoI subsidiary to buy Moneyxtra.com
Friday, November 10 2000
by Rory Kelleher


Bank of Ireland's UK subsidiary Bristol & West plc has announced its intention to
purchase Moneyextra.com for STG26.00 million but analysts say the model is
unproven as a revenue generator.

A financial analyst with Davy Stockbrokers, Scott Rankin, said it was too early
to tell whether it represented a good deal or not for the Bank because revenue
figures, and more detailed information on the profile of the site's customers,
were not available. However, he said that providing financial advice over the Web
had not proven itself as a viable way to make money over the Internet. He said
the planned acquisition was relatively small for a financial institution of Bank
of Ireland's size.



A statement from Bank of Ireland said that the acquisition was part of the Bank's
strategy of building Bristol & West's presence in selected profitable market
segments.



The Bank said this includes specialist lending markets and personal savings and
investments, as well as expanding into new profitable market segments to include
advice.



A spokesman for Bank of Ireland, David Holden, said the Bank had no intention of
offering Moneyextra services in Ireland because he said the Bank had a well
established e-structure here already. The business to consumer market has taken a
battering in recent months with a large number of dot.coms going under but Holden
said he believed the acquisition was not a risk.



"Some B2Cs are working very well," Holden said. "Intangible products are the
best hopes for success on the Internet."



"The Irish market is different to the UK. The Bank is pursuing strategic
alliances with particular channels, such as Unison and Esat Telecom's personal
finance channel," he said.



Oliver O'Shea, an analyst with Goodbody stockbrokers, said the problem with
aggregator sites that people came for financial information but then went
elsewhere to actually purchase financial products. However, he said that fact
that Moneyextra had 300,000 subscribers with personalised Web pages was
impressive and the deal looked like an effort to build a vertical market.



Bank of Ireland's Banking365 on-line currently has 60,000 subscribers and the
Bank hopes to increase this to 100,000 by March of 2001. The acquisition of
Moneyextra is subject to the approval of Moneyextra.plc shareholders who hold
49.4 percent of the eligible shares.



Bank of Ireland says the deal follows on from the recent acquisition of
Independent financial advisers Chase de Vere Investments plc.



A similar service Solmon.com was set up in the Republic by a former director of
Prudential, Adrian Daly. The financial services and products agency which
launched at the end of September, employs 60 people and handles around IEP10 
million in personal mortgages.