Commerce One, Inc.
Company typePublic
Founded1994; 30 years ago (1994)
FounderTom Gonzales
Tom Gonzales Jr.
DefunctFebruary 7, 2006; 18 years ago (2006-02-07)
FateAcquired
HeadquartersPleasanton, California
RevenueIncrease $401 million (2000)
Decrease -$344 million (2000)
Total assetsIncrease $3.070 billion (2000)
Total equityIncrease $2.799 billion (2000)
Number of employees
3,766 (2000)
Footnotes / references
[1]

Commerce One, Inc. operated online auctions focused on B2B e-commerce.[2][3] At the peak of the dot-com bubble, the company had a market capitalization of $21.5 billion.[4][5]

The company's technologies included Schema for Object-Oriented XML (SOX), an XML schema technology that influenced the development of the W3C's XML Schema language and the Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB).

History

The company was founded in 1994 as DistriVision by Tom Gonzales and his son, Tom Gonzales Jr.[6] It was renamed Commerce One in 1997 after Mark Hoffman became CEO.[5][1]

In January 1999, the company acquired Veo Systems from Asim Abdullah for $300 million.[7]

In November 1999, the company acquired CommerceBid from Ramesh Balwani for $4.5 million in cash and 785,000 shares and the company partnered with General Motors to create an online marketplace.[8]

In July 1999, on its first trading day after its initial public offering, the company's stock price rose 190%.[9]

In September 2000, the company acquired AppNet for $1.6 billion in stock.[10][1]

In December 2000, the company formed Covisint with Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Daimler AG, Renault, and Nissan. Ford and General Motors each received 14.4 million shares of Commerce One and Commerce One owned 2% of Covisint.[1]

In 2001, co-founder Tom Gonzales Jr. died of a rare cancer at age 35 and left his stake in the company in a trust to help the needy. His father was later accused of mismanaging trust funds.[6] The accusation was never proven.

In October 2002, the company announced that it planned to lay off 400 employees, 36% of its staff.[11]

The company filed bankruptcy on October 6, 2004 and emerged from bankruptcy two months later.[4][12]

In December 2004, a portion of the company's patent portfolio was sold to JGR Acquisitions, a subsidiary of Novell, for $15.5 million and the remainder of the company was sold to ComVest Partners for $4.1 million.[12][13]

In February 2006, the company was acquired by Perfect Commerce.[14]

In July 2017, Proactis acquired Perfect Commerce for $132.5 million.[15]

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Commerce One, Inc. 2000 Form 10-K Annual Report". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
  2. ^ "Commerce One soars after 3-for-1 split". CNET.
  3. ^ John Carreyrou (21 May 2018). Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-5247-3166-3.
  4. ^ a b "Commerce One rises from dot-ashes". American City Business Journals. March 6, 2005.
  5. ^ a b Hamm, Steve (February 3, 2003). "Online Extra: From Hot to Scorched at Commerce One". Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
  6. ^ a b SIMERMAN, JOHN (July 13, 2007). "Charity sues over legacy of dot-com". East Bay Times.
  7. ^ "Commerce One Buys Veo Systems". QuinStreet. January 19, 1999.
  8. ^ "COMMERCE ONE BUYS COMMERCEBID FOR STOCK AND CASH". The New York Times. Bloomberg News. November 6, 1999.
  9. ^ "IPO a smash? Ask Jeeves". CNN. July 1, 1999.
  10. ^ "Commerce One, AppNet tie". CNN. June 20, 2000.
  11. ^ Gilbert, Alorie (October 4, 2002). "Commerce One cuts deep". CNET.
  12. ^ a b Meland, Marius (May 3, 2005). "Mystery Solved: Novell Behind Acquisition Of Commerce One Patents". Law360.
  13. ^ Ferguson, Renee Boucher (December 8, 2004). "Commerce One Patents Auctioned Off". eWeek.
  14. ^ "ComVest Sells Commerce One to Perfect Commerce, A Leading Provider of SRM Solutions". Comvest Partners. February 7, 2006.
  15. ^ "Perfect Commerce - Proactis" (Press release). Globe Newswire. July 7, 2017.
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