Of .Coms and Cons: 1999–2004

Nonetheless the pipeline of new deals kept filling up, as issuers, driven by interest rate worries and concerns about a possible market collapse due to the ‘millennium bug’, lined up to get deals done before the fourth quarter. The worry was that computer systems around the world might cease to function on 1 January 2000 (Y2K). However the abundant credit that had been dispersed to avoid Y2K problems served to further fuel the already soaring stock markets and, in particular, investment in ‘dot.com’ companies or internet stocks. The dot.com companies were part of the wider TMT sector, that is, Technology, Media and Telecom, where a wide overlap of products and services existed. With the stock market falling due to the dot.com collapse, the telcos looked to finance their activities with debt. The major banks lined up to offer huge short‐term loans, the record being the France Telecom €30bn loan financing.