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Roth Capital Partners Inc.'s investment in Portland, Ore.-based ReelChip.com Inc. is taking a new turn after RedChip's August acquisition by Irvine-based FreeRealTime.com Inc.
Newport Beach-based Roth Capital plans to team with FreeRealTime and Jefferies & Co. of Los Angeles to develop a site for online public offerings and private placements called DigitalOffering.com. The move is designed to give online investors a shot at IPOs and other investments.
"The idea was born from our member base," said Geoffrey Moore, FreeRealTime's chairman and chief executive. "We had both been working on it during the course of the last year."
Moore said he and other FreeRealTime executives learned that RedChip, which offers online information about companies with small market capitalizations, also had plans to do online offerings.
Interestingly, Byron Roth, chairman and chief executive of Roth Capital and now a FreeRealTime board member, is venturing into waters chartered by his former partner, Walter Cruttenden, who left to start E*Offering, now part of E*Trade Group Inc. Cruttenden left E*Offering after E*Trade moved the online offering subsidiary from Newport Beach to San Francisco. Now he runs an investment firm, Cruttenden Partners, out of the former E*Offering office in Newport Beach.
Roth Capital acquired a 55% stake in RedChip in August 1999. Roth Capital...