The last dotcom entrepreneur

Chilling echoes of the 2001 dotcom crash attended the flotation of the internet price comparison business Moneysupermarket.com at the end of last month. Simon Nixon — not the financial journalist of that name but the company’s founder — was jetting around America and Europe on his roadshow as the market started to wobble, spooked by the American sub-prime lending crisis and the global credit crunch. On the day of the float, 26 July, the market fell nearly 200 points, its largest one-day fall of the year until then. ‘I thought we might have to pull it,’ says Nixon, a man who cherishes being in control. ‘But in the end the demand was there from investors at the lower price range.’

Less brave souls did pull their flotations and, in the event, Moneysupermarket.com was the last IPO to get under the wire before the stock market effectively shut down for the summer.