Features
Excite@Home to auction off its remains
SAN FRANCISCO — Bankrupt Excite@Home will auction off the last pieces of its defunct high-speed Internet access service Wednesday, putting the finishing touches on a fire sale that has extracted about $60 million from a business valued at $28 billion three years ago.
The public auction, to be held at Excite@Home’s Redwood City headquarters, will close another chapter in one of the most exasperating failures during the dot-com bust.
But it won’t end the strife stirred up by Excite@Home’s bankruptcy filing eight months ago.
The company’s investors plan to pursue lawsuits blaming Excite@Home’s demise on the alleged misdeeds of its former cable partners, chiefly AT&T, Comcast and Cox Communications. The damages could run as high as $9 billion, according to a group of about 200 Excite@Home shareholders fighting to become the lead representatives in a class-action securities suit filed in a New York federal court.
