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United Therapeutics Submits Initial Uniprost NDA Sections By Kyle Balluck 
Washtech - United Therapeutics Corp. [NASDAQ:UTHR] this morning
announced that it has submitted nonclinical and manufacturing sections
of its New Drug Application (NDA) for Uniprost for the treatment of
pulmonary hypertension.
Uniprost, also known as UT-15, is a modified form of the natural molecule prostacyclin. United Therapeutics said modifications enable the molecule to be delivered subcutaneously to patients with pulmonary hypertension. A 24 hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year intravenous delivery system is required for the currently approved synthetic copy of prostacyclin. Martine Rothblatt, United Therapeutics' chairman and chief executive officer (CEO), said in a statement that clinical sections of the NDA are on schedule to meet the company's third quarter 2000 filing target. United Therapeutics' Associate Director of Regulatory Affairs Dean Bunce added that the company intends to request the a priority review of the Uniprost NDA from the Food and Drug Administration. United Therapeutics is simultaneously preparing European marketing applications for Uniprost that are expected to be submitted during the fourth quarter of 2000. Pulmonary hypertension is a life-threatening disease that results from the progressive occlusion of blood vessels in the lungs. United Therapeutics estimates the form of the disease targeted by Uniprost afflicts 50,000 persons in North America and Europe. In addition, Uniprost is also being developed for the approximately 4,000 people in North America and Europe who have an idiopathic form of pulmonary hypertension. Silver Spring, Md.-based United Therapeutics now has Phase III drug development programs in pulmonary hypertension, peripheral vascular disease and osteoarthritis. The company also has pre-clinical programs in cardiovascular, respiratory and infectious diseases. Psion Plans Symbian IPO By Sylvia Dennis 
Newsbytes - Confirming rumors circulating for some time,
Psion announced late Tuesday that its Symbian joint venture, which
licenses Psion's Epoc operating system, is heading for an IPO.
The IPO, which is expected to value Symbian at between $7 billion and $8 billion, is an interesting one for Psion, which has a 28 percent stake in Symbian, since around half of Psion's share value is thought to derive from its Symbian stake. Speaking with journalists about Psion's second quarter figures, David Potter, Symbian's chairman and founder of Psion, said that although Symbian had received inquiries from other companies interested in becoming strategic investors, there were "no plans to materially change the shareholder structure." Potter has declined to put a date on the IPO, nor who will handle the deal. Psion, meanwhile, said that the offering will be "subject to good progress in the establishment of volume products and to prevailing conditions in financial markets." Press reports in London this morning take this to mean that an IPO will take place some time before the end of 2001. This would give Symbian at least 12 months of sales of GPRS (general packet radio system) -enabled Internet-driven mobile devices, which will arrive this fall as the high-speed GSM/PCS data service starts rolling on networks worldwide. GPRS, which will allow mobile users access to similar Internet speeds to those seen on landline modems, is expected to create a surge of interest in mobile Internet services. The other shareholders in Symbian are Ericsson, Matsushita, Motorola and Nokia. Psion's Web site is at http://www.psionusa.com/ Cyberrep.com Ends 2nd Round Financing For Up To $ By Kyle Balluck Washtech - Outsourced electronic customer relationship management (e-CRM) company Cyberrep.com today announced that it has completed its second round of financing of up to $19 million. The McLean, Va., company said the financing consisted of $7 million of subordinated debt with warrants and $1 million of equity from District-based Allied Capital Corp. [NASDAQ:ALLC]. Concurrently, Bank of America Commercial Banking established credit commitments totaling approximately $11 million, consisting of a line of credit and acquisition facility. In addition to providing working capital, Cyberrep.com said the second round of financing, completed in July, was used to fund the recent acquisition of 800 Support, an Oregon-based provider of technical support services and customer care for Fortune 500 and emerging technology businesses. Cyberrep.com officials could not be reached immediately, but President Douglas Palley said in a statement that with this round of financing, the company is now able to meet the increasing demand for its services. Palley said the 800 Support acquisition gave Cyberrep.com expanded services, added capacity and a geographic footprint that its customers require. Founded in 1991, Cyberrep.com's services include e-fax-on-demand, interactive voice response, customer interaction specialists, fulfillment, data mining and analysis and proactive CRM. Arlington Capital Shells Out $20Mil For @Link Funding By Staff Washtech -Washington, DC-based Arlington Capital chipped $20 million into the second funding round for @Link Networks of Louisville, Colo. @Link Networks provides digital subscriber line (DSL) and broadband communications services. @Link received a total of $101.2 million from Incepta, which led the round with $30 million, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, with a $15 million investment, and an affiliate of Merrill Lynch, which committed $5 million. @Link's previous investors, Madison Dearborn Partners, Columbia Capital, Telesoft Partners and Telecom Ventures, each reinvested at least 50 percent of their initial funding amounts into the company. The Colorado company said it will use the new cash to fund its strategic deployment across the middle third of the country, which will then be followed by a nationwide expansion. Arlington Capital Partners says it has more than $450 million of committed capital to fund companies in the communications, technology and information services industries. Dressmart.com Hits The Wall - Enter The Receivers By Steve Gold Newsbytes - Despite what appeared to be relatively solid business model, Dressmart.com, the pan-European men's fashion retailer, has called in the receivers. Comparisons with the spectacular failure of Boo.com earlier this year are inevitable, but industry experts point to $21 million that Dressmart.com spent on rolling out across eight countries in 16 months - as against the $126 million spent in six months by Boo.com. Launched by Mathias Plank and Markus Larsson, two young Scandinavian entrepreneurs in the spring of 1999, with the backing of the National Pension Insurance Fund's Sixth Fund Board and Emerging Technology with Kjell Spengberg, the firm was awarded "Best E-Commerce Company" and "Best Interactive Media Strategy" by the Scandinavian Interactive Media Event in June of that year. By the end of 1999, the firm was listed as one of the 12 most promising IT companies by the event, even boasting an investment by the King of Sweden. Business continued to boom and at the start of February, 2000, Dressmart.com launched into a new product category, sportswear. Today, the firm has operations in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and France, staffed by more than 80 employees. Plans had originally called for the company to continue its expansion in Italy, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Ireland, although this expansion went on to the back burner when the firm announced plans for reorganization on July 20. New Wave Group, the Swedish clothing company, said this afternoon that is has provisionally agreed to take over Dressmart.com, providing a number of stringent conditions are fulfilled. In return, the firm will guarantee a little over a million dollars - making a 25 percent payout to Dressmart.com's creditors - as well as around $500,000 in bridging funds for the Web operation. If the conditions are met and New Wave acquires Dressmart, New Wave says its trading system will be incorporated with Cyberwave, its wholly owned business-to-business operations, while Dressmart's Web sales operations will continue for at least the next few months. New Wave says that the courts have approved receiver Roland Sundqvist's provisional plans to restructure Dressmart under new ownership. The Forrester group, in its preliminary analysis of the Dressmart fallout, said that comparisons with the failure of Boo.com may be inevitable, but the two firms are completely different. Dressmart's problems, the research firm says, stem from Boo.com's failure, which made Internet investors "skittish." "Although Dressmart's business plan was solid - the firm was on track to show profits in late 2001 and experienced steady sales growth throughout July - the retailer simple ran out of funds to sustain the multinational business that its investors had pushed since the outset," said Forrester. As result of Boo.com and Dressmart's problems, Forrester has warned that there are more financial failures ready to hit Europe's online sales scene. The problem, the IT research firm says, is that, in Europe's early stages of online retail, no single country provides enough volume for a pure play to thrive. "Even though the UK will form Europe's biggest online retail market in 2000, the 41 million euros in apparel that will be sold on the Net in the UK this year represents only 0.1 percent of all apparel sales in the country," says the report. And, with dozens of startups competing for few buyers, there is no volume to sustain more than one or two in any retail category, Forrester concludes. Dressmart.com's Web site is at http://www.dressmart.com/ Forrester's Web site is at http://www.forrester.com/ PopMail.com Delivers $1Mil Investment To NC By Staff, Washtech Web-based calendar and local content provider NC, Inc., this morning said it has received a $1 million strategic investment from PopMail.com Inc. [NASDAQ:POPM], a permission- and affinity-based e-mail services company. Formerly known as NetCalendar Inc., Arlington, Va.-based NC said the funds will go toward advertising and marketing efforts, as well as the expansion of its local content and wireless services. In addition to the investment, PopMail.com has agreed to be the e-mail service provider for NC's calendar ASP product. With the investment, PopMail.com, headquartered in Irving, Tx., will hold a minority stake in NC. Further investment terms were not released. EU Ready To Okay Global E-Signature Bank System By Sylvia Dennis Newsbytes - The European Union (EU) expects to shortly approve plans to create a global digital signature-based system called Identrus. The Union announced today that interested parties have one month to comment on the system before it is rubber-stamped. The announcement is the closest indication to date that the EU is ready to parallel the electronic signature legislation passed by President Clinton earlier this summer. Originally founded in April, 1999, by ABN AMRO, Bank of America, Barclays, Chase Manhattan, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Hypo Vereinsbank, Identrus is a global business-to-business (B2B) network that supports authenticated and normally irrefutable transactions. To do this, Identrus requires each member bank to certify their corporate customers as trading partners on the Internet. To provide a high level of security, each partner will be required to use digital signatures. Since the Identrus consortium was notified to the EU for regulatory clearance in April of last year, it had been joined by Australia and New Zealand Banking Group , Banco Santander Central Hispano , CIBC WMC, HSBC Financial Services and NatWest. The EU is known to have been mulling the plan on two fronts: firstly, the B2B issue of anti-competitiveness, and second, as to the legality of e-transactions. Until a few days ago, experts had been expecting the EU to rule against major B2B portals and networks on the grounds of their being anti-competitive. However, the surprise Aug. 8 approval for MyAircraft.com, an airline B2B portal, suggests otherwise. The plan with Identrus is that partners will use the network infrastructure to conclusively identify one another through their financial institutions, ensure their communications are secure, and create an indisputable record of their transactions. With these capabilities, Identrus members will be able to conduct Internet business with confidence, opening new markets around the world and lowering their transaction costs. Uniquely, the Identrus infrastructure is open to financial institutions, their corporate customers, system providers and security vendors around the world. While the EU has admitted that it is concerned about the anti- competition aspects of Identrus, it noted in its press statement that each participant in the network is free to set the prices it charges to its end users. "The EU has recognized the importance of the establishment of such services for the development of e-commerce," said the statement, adding that, at stake is the need to provide authentication and related electronic transaction security services to end users. "The transactions concerned may be financial or commercial, such as purchases and sales of goods or trading in financial instruments, potentially all over the world," the statement went on to say. According to the EU, the certification system "is open to other financial institutions and will interoperate with other systems being developed by financial industry ventures, postal authorities and telecommunications carriers among others." Against this backdrop, the EU says that interested third parties now have one month to submit their comments before the Identrus joint venture is formally approved. Identrus' Web site is at http://www.identrus.com/ Michael Bloomberg Stymies Cyber-Extortion By Martin Stone Newsbytes - Two men from Kazakhstan are reportedly under arrest in London on allegations they attempted to extort $200,000 from Bloomberg LP after breaking into the financial news company's computer system. An Associated Press report said Michael Bloomberg, founder of the economic news and information company, played a central role in collaring the men after meeting with them in a London cafe in the company of two undercover bobbies. The report named Oleg Zezov, 27, who worked for a company producing database services for Bloomberg, and Igor Yarimaka, 37. Both men are being held without bail on charges they illegally entered Bloomberg's system and then demanded money in return for keeping the security breach secret. They claimed they were only seeking payment for disclosing a flaw in the system's protection methods. Prosecutors will seek to extradite the pair to the US, where the charges carry potential penalties of more than 20 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, AP said. Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com © Post-Newsweek Business Information, 2000. All rights reserved. |
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