Sneaky Business

Pizza.com gobbled up for $2.6m

Sneaky Business learned today that the domain name pizza.com has been bought for a whopping $2.6m. That's almost $0.5m per slice. Given that the domain owner, Chris Clark from Maryland, had maintained the site for a mere $20 a year since 1994, this represents an astonishing return on his investment.

According to the BBC article on pizza.com, Mr. Clark was prompted to sell after learning of another sky high valuation for a similar site, Vodka.com – that sold for $3m in 2006. "I thought, 'Why don't I just try to see what the level of interest is?'" Mr. Clark said. "If someone's willing to pay that much for Vodka.com, maybe there's more interest in pizza.com."

Interestingly, the pizza.com price-tag wouldn't even make the top three list of time most expensive list domain name sales. That list is dominated by two adult oriented sites – though, intriguingly, seniors.com was also picked up for $1.5m. And Tandberg managed to shell out $1.5m for the rights to use their name on their website. We're sure they must be very pleased about that investment.

 

All time most expensive domain names:

 

Domain	Price
Sex.com	$12m
Porn.com	$9.5m
Diamond.com	$7.5m
Vodka.com	$3.0m
Seniors.com	$1.5m
Tandberg.com	$1.5m
Cameras.com	$1.5m

 

Wrongful Dismissal - French Style

Sneaky Business applauds the brazen approach that Jerome Kerviel is taking towards his doomed career prospects. There aren't too many 31 year olds that can claim to have racked up losses of nearly $5B during their last year on the job. Most employees would quietly accept this kind of result as an inevitable black mark against their next performance appraisal. Not so Mr. Kerviel.

The Times of London today reported that our erstwhile French anti-hero is planning to sue SocGen, his former employer, over his dismissal. According to the Times: "…the rogue trader has launched court proceedings against Société Générale to contest his sacking for gross misconduct. Mr Kerviel claims his dismissal is unlawful because the bank has failed to prove he did anything wrong."

Bizarrely Mr. Kerviel's Clouseau-esque trading antics have won him a legion of adoring fans in his native France, where he is seen as "the Che Geuvera of France" who has laid low the imperialists.

We will continue to watch the case with interest.