Programme Examines Dotcom Phenomenon

A programme from the Business Channel - ‘Dot Con’ - will look at the dotcom craze of 2000/1 when thousands of investors poured enormous sums of money into the stocks of small start-up companies. Fuelled by unscrupulous traders on Wall Street and negligible due diligence by the banking community, the shares of many companies soared by hundreds of percent within hours of going public, turning teenagers into overnight paper millionaires.

Often it was enough to simply add the words “dotcom” to the end of the company name to guarantee a frenzy of interest from greedy venture capitalists and naïve investors.

Using revealing interviews with investment bankers and other ‘players’ of the time, the film examines the classic case of the US company Mortgage.com which went bust owing creditors millions and looks at the reasons why the dotcom phenomenon crashed so spectacularly on both sides of the Atlantic. It also provides an insight into the art of financial ‘flipping’ where investors at the IPO stage sell within hours of the stock going public, making millions.

‘Dot.Con’ can be viewed at the following times:

Tuesday 19 December: 12:00; 22:30
Friday 22 December: 16:00; 22:00
Saturday 23 December: 07:30; 10:00; 19:00
Sunday 24 December: 07:00; 17:00