First-e Group
First-e was a European online bank during the Dot-com bubble of 1999–2001. The company was based in Dublin, Ireland and employed 280 people, with 250,000 customers.[1] It operated on a licence from French bank Banque d'Escompte,[1] an innovation that allowed it to get around the usual difficulties faced by European banking startups.[2] It launched with €200m in funding from various institutions including Intel, Morgan Stanley and Apax Partners[3] and initially targeted the British market with a savings interest rate 2% higher than its high-street competitors, and gained 250,000 customers.[4]
A 2.4 billion euro[5] merger with the Spanish online bank Uno-e was proposed 2000,[2] but after the dotcom bubble burst in late 2000, parent company of Uno-e, BBVA called off the merger was in April 2001 and instead paid some €350m in compensation.[6] First-e then sold its business to Direkt Anlage Bank of Germany in October 2001.[1][7]
First-e was owned by the Enba group of companies, created by Gerhard Huber, Peter Phillips, Christian Kaiser, Nicholas Malcomson and Xavier Azalbert. Its Board included Sean Donlon, a former Irish ambassador to the US and the late Sir Nicholas Redmayne who was also its chairman.[8]
See also
[edit | edit source]Lua error in mw.title.lua at line 392: bad argument #2 to 'title.new' (unrecognized namespace name 'Portal').
References
[edit | edit source]- ^ a b c Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ a b Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).[dead link]
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
External links
[edit | edit source]- first-e website on the Internet Archive
- Announcement of closure by Banque d'Escompte on the Internet Archive
