The Wake Of The Crash

from the everything's-gone dept

The San Jose Mercury News takes a look at companies in the "wake" of the dot com crash. Over 70% of companies that went public in the boom years are either out of business or valued at less than half their original value (about 40% are dead, bankrupt, or were sold off in fire sales). That's pretty impressive for a crew of IPOs that went public in the past five years. The article suggests that investment bankers are going to take a lot of the blame and it may take a "generation" to recover - as many people won't trust the current crop of analysts after seeing what they did. Of course, many of those analysts have already been pushed out or moved on (often with fat severance checks), and should things turn up again, I don't think people will care that much. People have astoundingly short memories when money appears to be available.

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