Defunct portal Poland.com plotting comeback strategy

Poland.com, one of last year's Internet casualties, is planning a comeback with a prospective investor and a new strategy it will disclose by the end of this week, said Tomasz Głowiak, Poland.com's chief executive officer. Głowiak, a former marketing employee at Poland.com who led a three-man management buyout of the portal from Elektrim last November, said Poland.com has signed a letter of intent with an investor, but declined to reveal details. Głowiak hinted that IT services could be an option for Poland.com's new strategy, but added that the portal would definitely not become an Internet services provider. "We cannot continue our activities only as a horizontal portal; Hoga's example is the one to follow," Głowiak said, referring to the Katowice-based company that recently announced it would abandon its portal pages next month and offer only online IT services. "Nevertheless it would not be advisable to forfeit all the solutions worked out in Poland.com, so some of our former activities will be continued," he added. But Poland.com's investment deal has been held up by legal paperwork still in the hands of its former majority owner.

In last year's management acquisition of Poland.com, Głowiak and his partners signed a general preliminary agreement with telecom and power company Elektrim on two buyouts of the company's 75% stake in the online operations. The first transaction was completed but the second remains open, although Głowiak expects to receive the final legal documents from Elektrim this week. The Poland.com team paid Elektrim just zł. 90,000 for its majority stake in the portal. The portal's creator, venture capital firm MCI Management, owned the other 25%. Anna Garwolińska, the president of Glaubicz Garwolińska, Elektrim's local public relations firm, said the final papers for the Poland.com transaction have not been completed due to the recent change in Elektrim's management board and the company's other problems. Elektrim is in the midst of court-mandated negotiations to repay its bondholders who could effectively force the company into bankruptcy. It is also at the center of a flurry of shareholder activity with a recent announcement that media giant Vivendi Universal of France plans to sell its stake in Elektrim's telecom unit Elektrim Telekomunikacja (ET); an agreement between Elektrim shareholder BRE Bank and the Dutch investment group Eastbridge to acquire all ET's shares and later sell them; and a move by a BRE-led group of shareholders who plan to change Elektrim's supervisory board members at a general shareholders meeting next month.

Elektrim originally agreed to purchase 55% of the portal from MCI Management and Vogel Publishing in a $16.3 million transaction in September 2000, but refused to finalize the deal five months later. Elektrim said the portal did not fulfill certain conditions of the preliminary purchase agreement and that an independent appraisal put Poland.com's value at only $6.5 million. Elektrim purchased shares for an amount slightly less than the appraised value but raised its stake to 75% in May 2001, following some legal wrangling with MCI. Last fall, Elektrim launched plans to dispose of most of the expensive but largely unprofitable Internet and IT-related holdings it acquired during a spending spree in 2000. For now, Poland.com's dual English- and Polish-language pages are still online, but its services have been suspended with its last news reports dated Jan. 24, an absence of advertising banners and buttons and no free e-mail services.