New technology, new business idea

The Industrial Bank of Korea has found a novel way to join the queues of companies and individuals seeking to make money out of the internet.

The bank is offering "mortgages" on domain names. Sizing up the likely values to be generated on successful e-commerce sites, the bank plans to offer loans against the collateral represented by the domain.

With a maximum loan of about £16,000 on offer, values will be assessed by a multi-disciplined panel representing business, technology and finance experts. Best choices are .com names, followed by .net.

Values can get very high. Market rumour suggests that Compaq paid $3.3M for altavista.com, previously in the hands of another company.

Elliott Chase