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Nation Multimedia Bets on Internet With Thailand.Com Site — Bloomberg
January 24, 2000

BANGKOK (Bloomberg) - Nation Multimedia Group Pcl, seeking to replicate the success of China.Com, said it bought the nation's most visible dot-com address: Thailand.com. Nation Multimedia, which published Thailand's largest business daily newspaper and the No. 2 English-language newspaper, paid less than $7 million for the Internet address. It didn't identify the seller.

The company's Thai Portal Co. unit will provide airline ticketing, hotel reservations, on-line shopping and news in Thai and English. "Having a simple, easy-to-remember domain name is a huge benefit to our e-business venture," said Chairman Theerapatpong Thanachai.

Thailand, with a population of 61 million, has about 500,000 Internet users, a number that analysts expect to double within two years.

Thai Portal plans to spend about 300 million bath ($8 million) to develop the Web sites. The company aims to list its shares on the Nasdaq by the end of 2001.

Nation Multimedia's controlling shareholders are the founders of The Nation newspaper, led by Suthichai Yoon. Dow Jones & Co. and units of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. also hold stakes. China.com Corp., the first Chinese Internet content provider to list on the Nasdaq stock market, rose more than four-fold since it sold shares to the public in Julu, closing Friday in the U.S. at $92.44.

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