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for £45m in order to raise money to keep going. In June 2002 the company, which had told its creditors it would run out of money by the end of the month, sold the bulk of its UK business to BT for £5 million - just two years previously the company had been valued at over £2.5 billion. The remainder
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Robertson and his business partner
Jonathan Bushby renamed their company (then known as Timeload) as FreePages and set itself up as a rival directory enquiries service a few months later. In February 1996 the firm was listed on the
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acquired a 20-year licence from BT to operate Scoot, with its 2,500 local advertisers, for a rumoured £10m. BT maintains an economic interest, based upon future revenues. Enable Media was bought by
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for £189.9m. However, the company failed to reach its hoped-for user numbers and ran out of cash. Following heavy losses in the first half of 2001, Bonnier quit as chief executive in June 2001.
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The
European side of the business was bought out by Vivendi, its major shareholder, and in August 2001 the company was forced to sell Loot, its only profit-making business, to
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Bonnier renamed the company Scoot, and the firm began to aggressively promote itself with television advertising in the UK and a link-up with French media giant
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of FreePages and sold out of the company, leaving it under the direction of Robert
Bonnier, a Dutch financier who had joined FreePages in February 1995.
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of the business reverted to its original name of
Timeload, but less than a year later it was acquired by the Coe Group, a video surveillance company.
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number of 192. BT spent three years trying to recover the number in legal battles but were finally forced to admit defeat in May 1996.
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for an estimated value of just £100. Robertson had spotted the potential of acquiring a freephone number similar to BT's own
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in 2006, for £3m, to expand its local broadband TV service. It had revenues of 3m. In 2009 they sold Enable Media to
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website. It was one of the highest profile casualties of the rise and fall of internet companies during the
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at the beginning of the 21st century falling from a value of £2.5 billion in 2000 to £5 million in 2002.
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In 2014 Touch Local (including Enable Media which owns the Scoot brand) was sold to US company
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549:Online marketplaces of the United Kingdom
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466:"ITV buys online directory business"
437:"BT sells dotcom bubble brand Scoot"
355:"Scoot shares plunge as chief quits"
435:White, Domonic (1 December 2005).
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464:Guha, Malina (1 December 2006).
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381:"Scoot says 'one month left'"
300:"Scoot links up with Vivendi"
270:Gilbert, Nick (1 June 1997).
272:"The great freephone fiasco"
140:Daily Mail and General Trust
494:TouchLocal Buys Scoot in UK
406:Milmo, Dan (27 June 2002).
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102:British Telecommunications
100:number 0800 192 192 from
408:"BT buys Scoot for £5m"
213:"BT buys Scoot for £5m"
524:Scoot Official Website
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76:is a United Kingdom
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184:"Scoot cuts losses"
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306:. 17 November 1999
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326:"Scoot gets Loot"
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170:References
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98:freephone
18:Scoot.com
474:. London
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280:. London
248:. London
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64:Launched
544:Web.com
164:web.com
129:Vivendi
88:History
49:English
74:Scoot
31:Scoot
480:2012
451:2012
422:2011
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133:Loot
67:1998
385:BBC
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153:ITV
148:Ltd
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